High Tide
by Koko-chan1
Summary: The Reikai Tantei have been sent to recover a lost soul from the Shattered lands, but the timing is bad, and there is no more dangerous or confusing place to be... Ninth in the Harlequin series.


High Tide

-by-

The Blue Spanch and Koko-chan

(Also copious thanks to MExum65008 and Luriko-Ysbeth for the Shattered-Land ideas)

ooooo

 **A/N: This is a couple of days late, and I could make all sorts of excuses about work and errands and general real life woes, but the plain truth of the matter is that I was stalling. I want to apologize for this story; I consider it the weakest work of the series for countless reasons, not the least of which being that I still hadn't figured out that adding roleplay plotlines without any sort of reference was a bad idea. A little voice in my head kept insisting that if I just ignored this story, it would cease to exist. This lasted until Spanch told me to man up and stop being a wuss. So despite me crawling under my desk to die of embarrassment for this thing we did, I hope you all enjoy it.**

ooooo

 _In the sibilant backwash of roaring vortices of chaos-drawn space lies a single, stagnant place. Tranquil as cairn moss, the things that hover uncertain between true life and oblivion lie sleeping; torpid for now, ravening dulled by indifference._

 _Within the lifeless waters of this horribly still place, a creature that is one and yet a conglomerate of many creatures hovers over a prison with neither walls nor bars. It has long forgotten what or who it was. Not that it matters._

 _The creature gropes for the prison with disparate and disjointed grasping limbs, sucking with many broken-toothed mouths at the unyielding surface, mindlessly hungry for the warm flesh warm soul tucked so snugly within. It is, of course, an unsuccessful effort. Five hundred thousand times this nameless thing has searched the prison over to find an opening, any opening at all. It would have given up its search and forgotten the object entirely if it had not been for one thing; the lingering aroma of old pain older fear that sifted from it like a miasma that was sweeter than honey to the creature outside._

 _And so it remained, in this lone tideless pool in a Tide-wracked universe, a soulless thing thirsting forever for the forbidden blood of a single forgotten prisoner._

ooooo

Kurama sat up in bed with a groan. That damn dream had come back again, as it did every spring. His mouth felt like he had been sucking sand all night; gritty and sour. Muzzily he ran his fingers through his tangled hair and yawned hugely. He would not be getting back to sleep tonight, not with those unsettling images haunting the backs of his eyelids. He wished that Hiei was with him; he'd outgrown teddy bears years ago and he needed something to hug. He wrapped his arms around his knees with a sigh and let his mind wander, eyes finding patterns in the shadows sliding over the furniture. Here and there, he saw hints of his nightmare that highlighted his early-morning loneliness. A slim body dancing in patches of false-dawn light, leggy as a cheetah and smoother than silk. A shirt hung over a chair provided the figure with batlike wings, an art project in progress on his desk gave it the semblance of a battered hat. A scarf blowing in the breeze from the partially opened window suggested a flowing ponytail. The breeze itself brought near-inaudible, ghostly whispers of a half-forgotten voice. He watched the shadow dancer for a timeless time, and then something startled him badly; the dancer turned to face him, and a marble that he had found in his garden lent a cobalt glint to a shadow eye. _Help..._ whispered the breeze.

"Kuronue!" Kurama gasped, and then it was gone.

The first rays of dawn turned the glint back into a plain blue marble; the shadows were just shadows. Birds twittered sleepily outside, warming up for the day. Kurama shivered, donned his bathrobe, and went out to the garden to let the fresh air clear his head. The dew of new grass chilled his toes, but he barely felt it as he drank in the cool morning air, sweetly scented with the first cherry blossoms of the year. The sun rose slowly in the east in a blaze of vibrant colors, bringing with it the Love of Spring. Kurama could feel it, the enormous but infinitely gentle force that pushed life back into the world with slow, deliberate pressure. The warmth was coming back early this year. Soothed a bit by the peace of his garden, Kurama knelt and gently fingered the new russet-green leaves of his rose bushes. A burst of fiery ki behind him announced Hiei's arrival. "You're going to get thorns stuck in your feet if you're not careful." He remarked matter-of-factly.

Kurama gave a small snort of amusement, swivelled around and wrapped his arms around his firebaby, holding him very close and leaning his head on the smaller boy's chest. Hiei wasn't quite sure what to make of this; there was obviously something bothering the Kitsune, but Kurama didn't seem inclined to discuss it. So instead he stood there in silence, combing the fox's tangled hair with his fingers and enjoying the tranquility.

ooooo

Several hours later, Kurama was still feeling haunted and morose as he ambled through the pine forest with Hiei. He couldn't get either his nightmare or the predawn shadows out of his mind; never before had such a nebulous figure pleaded to him for help, and Kuronue was long dead, gone wherever departed spirits go. He'd probably already gone through four or five reincarnations by now, anyway. Yet still a sense of foreboding haunted him. Something was going to happen, he just knew it.

Hiei by now was feeling a tinge of worry; He'd never seen Kurama quite this moody before. He had asked the fox what was bugging him during breakfast, but Kurama had told him that he'd had a bad dream and that it was nothing to worry about. Hiei wasn't too sure about that. Come to think of it, Kurama got this way every spring, but never this bad. He wondered what dreamtime horror had so rattled his lover.

In silence they left the woods and entered the park. Kurama perked up a bit at the sight of the flowerbeds; the time of crocus and spring iris had passed, but all sorts of daffodils and tulips were in enthusiastic bloom, and tiny sprigs of grape hyacinth poked their indigo cones up around the larger plants. Hiei sighed softly with impatience and stood quietly by as Kurama examined the display. Sometimes he wondered if there were a dryad or two in Kurama's ancestry. Hiei didn't have time to get seriously bored, fortunately. Yuusuke and Kuwabara arrived, looking very pleased with themselves. "Hi there, guys." Kurama said with a welcoming smile. "You look like you've been trawling for muggers again."

"Gotta do something to keep in shape." Kuwabara laughed.

Yuusuke and Kuwabara had discovered a new team sport just after Christmas- vigilantism. The Harlequin had given them a couple of marvellous new weapons to play with, and they had done so with wild abandon. There was not a single mugger, rapist, thief, arsonist, or gang member in the entire district that did not scream a lot and run away whenever they saw the pair walking down the street.

"So, what's been up with you lately, Kurama?" Yuusuke asked. "We haven't seen all that much of you lately."

"Exam week." Kurama replied with some distaste. "I've been studying so hard that the subjects have been branded into the backs of my eyeballs, and it's going to be the same again starting Monda-aaah!"

Kurama reeled as a flood of images suddenly deluged his mind. Again he saw the dark, stagnant place of his nightmare, the taste of chill, brackish sand in his mouth. Fossilized fear ran up his backbone like a frozen spider and again a shadow begged for help.

"Kurama!" A distant voice called. "Are you all right?"

"You aren't getting epileptic on us, are you?" Asked another familiar voice.

Only one person could be so tactless in a situation like this, and the knowledge guided him back to reality. Kurama found himself leaning heavily on Kuwabara's shoulder, trembling with a new urgency. "Something's going to happen." Kurama gasped. "Something terrible, if we don't do something."

"He's right," a new voice came from behind them, making Kurama start in surprise, "Koenma needs you guys right now, if only to get the Piper calmed down."

"Hi, Botan," Yuusuke said, "what's going on?"

Botan shook her head and manifested her oar. "I don't have time to explain. Come on!"

Something was wrong with Interspace this time; it twisted under their feet like a gigantic snake and roared with the sound of a storm-tossed ocean. Much to the Spirit Detective's relief, it did not break under their weight, though it did sag and tremble like overburdened rubber. When they did arrive in Koenma's study, they could instantly tell that some disaster had happened; the air was so full of nervous tension that one could almost cut it into bricks and build a wall.

Koenma himself was seated at his desk, shuffling through the stacks of paperwork and fidgeting with his pacifier. "Ah, you're here," he said, looking up from his work.

"Hey, guys, glad you could make it," Someone else said from on top of the drapes. "I nearly didn't."

They looked up. Perched atop the curtains was the Harlequin, playing straight Solitaire with an unmarked deck. For once, the God of Chaotic Silly wasn't smiling- a very bad sign. "What's going on here?" Yuusuke asked.

"Both the Ningenkai and the Reikai are in deadly peril," Koenma began, standing up on his chair, "A very important spirit has been kidnapped by evil creatures of the Shattered Lands, and-"

"Tell them the truth, you misbegotten son of a yellow monkey." The Piper growled from the far corner of the room.

The Spirit Detectives got something of a shock when they saw the huge monster- he was extremely pissed off at something. His glossy brick-red hide had darkened to the shade of old blood, and his faceted obsidian eyes glittered with internal fire. He was reclining in an intricate coil in the corner, sharpening one of his massive katanas, drawing the whetstone over the blade with hair-rasing screech. George stood by holding another one of the swords, obviously scared out of his socks at being this close to a big, angry predator. The only thing that kept the poor Oni from bolting was the end of Piper's tail, which was wrapped firmly around his ankle. "Go on," Piper grated, barely suppressed rage filtering through every syllable, "tell them. It's not a good idea to lie to your agents."

Koenma deflated visibly. "It's like this; the outlying provinces of the Reikai have been giving my father a lot of trouble lately, and he's been in a really awful mood for weeks. I recently got a message from him that says he's going to hold a big inspection when he gets back, and if there's any loose ends, no matter how small, I'm in for a real spanking! And as if that weren't bad enough, you can just bet that the Ningenkai will feel the backlash of his temper. I've managed to clean up all the troubles but one; there's one last lost soul somewhere in the Shattered Lands-"

"Which you expect me to find at High Tide. _High Tide!_ " Piper bellowed furiously, interrupting the nervous demigod. "In the space of a few days, a week at most, the Shattered Lands will be a chaotic deathtrap! Already the orbits have shifted and the Free-Roamers have gone to ground for the season- as I should be doing right now! I have already risked my very existence just getting here, and I refuse to risk the lives of others in such a foolish expedition. Besides, that spirit has been where it is for many years, and three more months should not make a difference."

"But Lord Enma will be furious!" Botan pleaded. "There's no telling what he might do."

Piper was unmoved. "Enma has had temper tantrums before, Koenma has had bruised buttocks before, the Ningenkai has had natural disasters before. All three have survived these tribulations easily. The misplacing of one Chimera spook is not worth the demise of a team of promising young people. I will not go."

 _Chimera!_ The word made something go _click_ in Kurama's mind.

"Cool it, Piper," Kuwabara said to the fuming monster. "Just what is this 'high tide' thing, anyway?"

Piper sat back with a sigh of exasperation. "During the spring months- March, April, and May, life must be pushed back into the worlds. The Hub does this, sending out incredibly enormous pulses of life force like the trunk of a tree returning sap to the outermost twigs. The pulses increase in power steadily through March, and by mid-April they reach their full strength and highest frequency. In the Three worlds, which are a lot stabler than the Shattered Lands, this means that your gardens are blooming like crazy. The Shattered Lands, however, are tossed about like pebbles in a tidal wave, and are totally impassible. We Free-Roamers call this time High Tide, for the sheer rush of life force that sweeps through everything, for good or ill. It is also very close to mid-April now, and as for the state of the Lands themselves... Just see for yourselves."

Piper pulled out the map of the Shattered Lands that Harlequin had given him at the Christmas party some months ago and activated it. He hadn't been exaggerating the problem. Shards of strange realities hissed and whirled in extremely eccentric orbits around the Three Worlds, little clusters breaking off from the main rings to dance in tight spirals and roulettes through the system like drunken tornadoes. Waves of them whirled strangely in Escherized ripples in and out of the Interspace cables, some eddies ripping out of the rows and getting stuck in rocking backwashes behind the main Worlds. There was no rhyme or reason at all behind the glittering display; it was like watching an animated Pollock painting, or maybe the Harlequin's chromatic slacks.

"And this is just the start." Piper murmured. "Sometimes I wish that the Netherworld hadn't been destroyed; things were a lot stabler then. In a few more days, the Lands will become impossible to navigate- even now you would have to stick your sense of self-preservation on a shelf somewhere to do so. Even if we leave immediately, we would have only a very small chance of getting out alive, much less locating and returning with the Chimera."

"Damn, what a mess." Hiei said as a couple of shards collided and exploded violently. "I'm willing to wait another three months."

"Same here." Yuusuke agreed.

Kurama, however, had something else on his mind. "Koenma, would this Chimera spirit by about this tall, with bat wings, blue eyes, gray-black hair, and a beat-up old hat?"

Koenma shuffled around in the stacks of paper until he found the dossier. "Let's see... Yeah, that's him. He answers to the name 'Kuronue'. It says here that he was last seen robbing a palace in the Makai in the company of a Silver Kitsune."

Kurama promptly turned around, grabbed Piper's topmost shoulder straps and hauled his head down to eye level. "We're going after him." Kurama said in a flat, final tone. "Now."

"Kurama, don't be stupid!" Piper yelped, trying to pull away and failing. "According to that bit of paper, Kuronue's been wherever he's been for well over a century. Three more months will make no significant difference in this matter. If we get wiped out trying to get to him now, he will stay where he is forever!"

"I'm willing to take that chance." Kurama said quietly. "Kuronue was one of my best friends. I'm not going to lose him again."

"You're going to force me into this, aren't you." Piper said with a groan.

"You betcha."

"Very well, I'll take you to look for him, but if we get killed along the way, I am never going to talk to you again. Anyone else want to follow us on this fiasco?"

Hiei stepped forward. "Where Kurama goes, I go."

"I'll come, I'll come!" Harlequin shouted, leaping off the curtains and scattering cards everywhere. "I've always wanted to see a Universe playing 'Twister' from the inside!"

"I admit that I'm curious about this Kuronue guy," Yuusuke said, "it's been bugging me ever since Yakumo tried to rebuild the Netherworld on our turf."

"And I'm not going to let you guys hog all the fun." Kuwabara declared. "I'm up for a little adventuring. It's more interesting than studying for the history final, anyway."

Koenma, meanwhile, had been fishing around in his desk drawer. With a grunt of triumph, he pulled out a small device, which he handed to Yuusuke. "Here," he said, "this should help you find Kuronue. It's a tracking device tuned to his ki. Happy hunting!"

Piper gave him a look that could have withered a thornbush. "When this is over, you and I are going to have a talk. One way or another. Come on, people, let's get going before this little twerp gets any more bright ideas."

ooooo

The trip through Interspace was unsettling- it took longer than it normally did, and faint rainbow ripples ran up and down the spectrums around them. Weird, unearthly music whispered around them, and half-formed figures gibbered and beckoned from a distance. With some relief, they burst out into a place both still and dimly lit. There was no sky, just an area of blackness overhead, and the bleak ground was nothing more than barren dark stone with a few crags and weathered formations here and there, interspersed with the occasional still, deep pool. It was absolutely silent, the air hanging dully like ancient drapes.

Harlequin sniffed disapprovingly. "Not exactly a party joint, is it? Just where are we, Piper?"

"Bone Man's Office." Piper replied calmly, and then plucked the tracking device out of Yuusuke's hands and tossed it into a nearby pool.

"Hey!" Yuusuke protested as the gadget sank out of sight. "What did you do that for?"

"Koenma slipped us a ringer." Piper said. "That was a tracking device, all right; one set to track _us_. The gods have always been curious about the Lands, and waste no opportunities to find out about them."

" _What?!_ "

"Oh, it's quite true. There's a great deal of power and treasure to be had in the Lands, and that sort of thing always attracts the wrong kind of people. Besides," Piper said with a disapproving sniff, "this is my turf. I'm not about to have a bunch of claim-jumping deities messing about and destabilizing the whole works."

"Then what about him?" Hiei said, jerking a thumb at Harlequin.

"I'm already unstable." 'Quin replied, and turned into a purple marmoset to prove it.

Our heroes set off across the barren terrain towards some goal known only to the Piper; in time, a tiny golden glow in the darkness became visible, shining elusively among the jutting rock formations that dotted the landscape like public sculpture. Every so often, something nightmarish would stick its head out of a pool and watch them go by with deep, curious eyes. Eventually, they came to a wide, rough-hewn monolith on which perched a perfectly ordinary steel-and-formica desk; the glow that they had been following for the past ten minutes turned out to be a reading lamp. Working at the desk was an elderly blue-skinned and white-haired Oni wearing a patch over one eye. After a moment, he looked down at them, smiling when he saw Piper. "Hi, Piper. What do you need this time?"

Piper snorted. "I don't come here all _that_ often, Alexander. Is Spargenox in?"

Alexander shook his head sadly. "Sorry, no. The boss left three days ago to repair the anchoring on Golganoth and Ionia- he may not be back until High Tide is done with. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"We need a good spirit trace on a certain misplaced soul, a Chimera by the name of Kuronue."

"No problem. The equipment and the ledgers are all in the shed way over there. If you would follow me..."

Alexander spiralled down out view, as though he was descending a spiral staircase. This was not exactly accurate; to the horror of the Spirit Detectives, Alexander was a giant centipede from the waist down- instead of a chair, he used a long pole thrust into the stone behind the monolith. On the ground, he was as long as Piper was, but stood no taller than Hiei. He scuttled off towards the distant shed in a fluid motion of smooth coffee-colored chitin, hundreds of jointed legs moving in perfect sine waves underneath. Piper and the others followed with some show of unease from the Detectives.

Kuwabara leaned over to Piper and muttered: "Piper, just what is this guy?"

"Chimera." Piper replied, unconcerned.

" _Chimera?!_ He doesn't look anything like Kuronue." Kurama said, looking askance at their guide.

Harlequin chuckled at their confusion. "Kurama, the word 'chimera' is a very old one; the original root word -loosely translated- meant 'spare bits'. The race is not an old one by a long shot. They were invented quite by mistake by the sorcerers who lived during the Makai's Golden Age well before the Netherworlders crashed the party. The Chimerae were very popular as bodyguards, pets, watchdogs, slaves, and um... curiosities. Their construction became something of an art form up near the end of the era, and the more complex the mix, the better the people liked them. I'm afraid that sort of thing didn't work very well for the poor creatures; rather a lot of the Chimerae were fragile, psychotic, stupid, or all three at once. The simpler mixes, such as the batwinged humanoids and Oni-centipede crossbreeds managed to survive the disaster and spread all over the place. I've even found the silly things as far away as Greece."

They had reached the shed at that point. Inside the building was shelf after shelf of heavy leather-bound grimoires, the floor littered with crates of arcane paraphernalia. Alexander dug into a nearby crate and after some rummaging, came up with a device that looked like a cross between a compass and a skeleton watch. "Found the tracker," Alexander said, "and now for the trace."

He handed the tracking device over to Hiei and pulled a thick, dusty book down from its shelf and began flipping through it. Inside were long descriptive passages written in a strange, alien script, each passage accompanied by a small, leaf-shaped flake of colored light. "Let's see," Alexander murmured, tracing the script with one finger. Kekko, Kiroushi, Kourin, Kynn... Fellas, I hate to tell you this, but Kuronue isn't in here."

" _What?!_ " Our heroes chorused.

"These volumes clearly list every single lost dead dude in the entire system!" Alexander said with some agitation. "If he's not registered here, it means that he's still alive somewhere."

"Right!" Kurama snapped, grabbed Piper's harness and set about dragging the monster out of the door. "We're going to find him this instant and-"

"Kurama!" Piper cut him off desperately, toeclaws skittering over the stone. "We don't even know where to begin looking!"

Kurama let go with a curse. "Is there any way to learn?"

"There might be." Alexander put in, flipping through a book of spells. "We'd need someone who was fairly close to the creature, a friend or a lover or something."

"Speaking." Kurama replied.

"I, too, have been acquainted with him." Hiei surprised everyone by saying.

"Oh, that's right," Kurama muttered, remembering something, "Kuronue did have our children by you, didn't he?"

" _Nani?!_ " Kuwabara gasped, unable to believe his ears. "How... What.. Did you.."

Harlequin fell over, howling with laughter. "Oh, what a picture! Hiei pregnant with twins! Did you bottle or breast-feed them, Hiei? Or maybe- aaarrgh!"

Hiei did not like to be laughed at. Blushing furiously, he zonked the laughing god with a fireball.

"Well, that'll better our chances of getting an accurate trace, at least," Alexander said diplomatically, "if you two would step over here, please..."

ooooo

Kuwabara, slightly sickened, leaned on Yuusuke's shoulder as some serious spellsay occurred some distance from the group. "How did he... they... I mean, yuck..." He whimpered.

"Koorime can breed same-sexed. They don't need a guy or a girl specifically, just a partner." Piper said, dipping a still smouldering Harlequin into a nearby pool. "This is a good thing, considering that the Koorime tribe generally consists of females obsessed with racial purity. Hiei is an exception, seeing as he actually had a father."

"All the same, bleah."

Perhaps half an hour later, Kurama, Hiei, and Alexander returned, the Oni holding a tiny sliver of swirling blood-and-tangerine light. "This should lead you right to him," he said, slipping the shard into the tracker. "Haul out that map you've been boasting about and have a look."

If anything, the Shattered Lands were whirling about even more crazily than before. The tracker seemed to know what it was about even in that mess, and a spike of red orange light pointed unerringly to a small, dull-grey Land that circled sullenly in the backwash of the Ningenkai.. "Three times curse it," Piper grunted sourly, "he's stuck in the Glen of the Damned."

"Wonderful." Yuusuke groaned. "Come on, let's get him out of there before something eats him."

"You sure you want to do that?" Alexander asked, examining the map and then pointing to an ivory-tinted Land hovering between vortices of Interspace cables. "We're here; the Glen is way the hells over there. That's a real hazardous route to take right now, since the Nightmare has recurred again and the middle orbits have broken up."

"We don't have much of a choice in this matter," Hiei said with a sidelong glance at Kurama, "this idiot fox will go though hell and high water to get his old partner back."

"You'll see enough and more than enough of both." Alexander conceded. "You're all quite mad, you know."

"Whatever took you so long to figure that out?" Harlequin said, going cubist and following Piper and the other into Interspace.

ooooo

"Where the hell is this?" Yuusuke asked, trying to focus on the new surroundings.

It was like walking through a thick fogbank; the eyes refused to register depth perception. The air had a curious underwater quality to it, and it rippled slightly when they moved too quickly. Pearly white it glowed most dreamily luminous, and angular silver gleams drifted lazily through it like tissue paper on a languid breeze. A soft sound of glass chimes tinkled through the air- mirrors dancing the last waltz in freefall.

"We call this place Analogue Mirrors," Piper said softly, "you can see who you are in other dimensions here. Walk softly though, and make no sudden moves. This place is quite unstable at the best of times, and I'd rather that it didn't break while we're in it."

"Sound reasoning." Yuusuke replied.

They walked in silence from then on, watching their otherworldly reflections. Yuusuke saw in passing one of the gleaming silver mirrors a tall, young, dark-haired man, dressed in ancient Chinese robes. The Chinese pictogram for "ogre" had been tattooed on his forehead, and a long ponytail hung over one shoulder. The reflection flickered over the breath-thin surface and was gone, leaving Yuusuke to wonder who that bright-eyed stranger was.

Kuwabara paused and stared at his reflections, for there were two; the images sifting and decanting from one to the other. One was an extremely tall and powerful brown-haired young man dressed in white; his long coat had the word "bad" written on the back, and he carried a huge cavalry blade over one shoulder. The other image was considerably shorter. There was a look of almost terminal rage and confusion on that face, dark eyes glaring at something other than Kuwabara. He was dressed in yellow, carried a large backpack and a red bamboo umbrella on his back, and wore a yellow headband patterned with short black stripes. For some reason, the image of a small black piglet was superimposed mistily over the boy in the mirror. "Weird." Kuwabara muttered, shaking his head.

Harlequin strode smugly down the milky halls, grinning at his reflections. There were dozens of them, and only a few of them were recognizably human. A one-eyed priest with turquoise blue hair mocked a belligerent redhead carrying an iron fan; Duo, the boy with the long braid whom they had met during Harlequin's Christmas party painted "Kick Me" on the back of a huge robot. A tall man in his twenties wearing the traditional garb of a swordsman wielded a wooden sword, an expression of cretinous nobility on his face. One of the most unexpected images was Jin, caught in the act of raiding a cookie jar. What every one of these images shared were the slightly manic eyes and the insolent smirk of the accomplished goofball. The air around them shimmered with echoes of unheard laughter.

Kurama smiled back reflexively at his reflection; the resemblance was all but perfect. Perhaps a few inches shorter, the image of a blue-eyed redhead stood resplendent in archaic swordsman's robes. The only thing that marred that gently smiling face was a vicious cross-shaped scar on one cheek and a strange pain that haunted the eyes, hiding behind a genuinely sweet nature. This was the face of a man who would not only help with the laundry but would also assist in kicking invading ninjas out of the garden.

Hiei glared around at the mirrors with some suspicion. He didn't know exactly how thin the worldwalls were at the moment, but he'd had some bad experiences with magic mirrors in the past. Most of the images were harmless- short peevish people for the most part, a few junkyard dogs, a big striped cat or two, the tall, stone-faced guy with the gun fixation from 'Quin's Christmas party; nothing to concern himself about. Thus, he was unprepared for an image that manifested itself right in front of him, forcing Hiei to halt and stare. The person on the other side of the rippling silver gleam was propped up on a stone, glaring over the horizon, deep in his own thoughts. Hiei shifted his weight uneasily; something about this image was wrong... The motion attracted the attention of the figure on the other side, who glared right into Hiei's eyes.

Piper scarcely paid any attention to his reflections. He'd seen them before and had even talked with a few of them in his past travels. He was far more interested in getting to the Glen and back without getting them all killed. Yuusuke interrupted his ruminations on this subject with a very important question. "Hey, Piper, can any of those mirror guys see us?"

"No," Piper replied with a shake of his head, "such an event would be most unusual, even for this time of year. Why do you ask?"

"Because Hiei and his reflection are glaring at each other."

Piper swung himself around with a yip of alarm. Sure enough, Hiei stood face to face with an almost exact image of himself, air rippling furiously in tempo with Hiei's growling. In perfect unison, they raised a fist to strike the phantom cold...

"Hiei!" Piper barked as the twinned fists rushed forward, "Stop! Don't do th- Oh, _crap!_ "

As the blows reached their goal, the fabric of space and time warped impossibly around each other and, unable to bear the strain of the impossibility occurring within it, Analogue Mirrors fragmented around them with an unbelievable sound of shattering.

ooooo

Yuusuke awoke on a hard, cool surface somewhere where the air was warm, the gravity light, and the illumination was softly silver. As his bleary vision swam back into focus, he realized that he had landed on a familiar Land, that place that was made all out of crystal. A world of flat glassy plains and huge crystal formations that sailed silently forever under an endless nightscape. The two gemlike moons were twin crescents cupping a waterfall of bright stars between them. A few feet away, Harlequin rolled onto his belly with a groan. "Ooooh. That's the last time I fly commercial. Is everyone still extant?"

With a long series of moans and whimpers, the others hauled themselves into sitting positions. "Let's see," Kuwabara said, clutching a throbbing skull, "there's Yuusuke and Kurama and that annoying clown guy and Piper and... Uh oh. Guys, there's two of Hiei."

Sure enough, sitting up at exactly the same time, rubbing their heads with exactly the same motion, and wincing identically at exactly the same headache were Hiei and a very close analogue. The moment they caught sight of each other, they began to bristle up and growl ferociously at each other, two tigers on a hill preparing for the attack. Fortunately before any fights could start, the newcomer was hauled eight feet into the air with his arms pinned behind him and a very firm grip clamped onto the long monkey tail that extended from his butt.

"And what is this?" Piper said, examining his struggling captive with great interest. "A strange creature of short stature, a long fuzzy tail, scary hair, silly armor, and miserably bad temper. Hello, Vegita."

"You!" Vegita snarled in a voice much like Hiei's, only made harsher from a lifetime of shouting too much, "You're dead! I blasted you clean into another dimension!"

"Quite true," Piper replied calmly, "but where do you think you are now? My dear boy, I've been jumping from dimension to dimension since before your great-grandfather was an evil gleam in your great-great-grandmother's eye. Do you really think that another crash translation would jostle me?"

Before Vegita could come up with a suitable (or printable) answer, Harlequin bounced into view, full of mischief as a truckload of ferrets. "Hark! I have heard the voice of an old acquaintance! Hi, Veege! Hi, Veege! Hi, Veege!"

With a screech of terror, Vegita wrenched himself free of the Piper's grip and took refuge on the monster's topmost shoulders. Piper gave the trembling stranger a surprised glance, and then turned a glare on the Harlequin. "All right, you psychotic mime," he sighed, "I have fought this little horror before. He fears absolutely nothing and would happily fight to the death to prove it. Yet still he hides trembling on my back at the very sight of you. What did you do to him, Harlequin?"

'Quin shrugged, slightly embarrassed as everybody turned a suspicious look on him. "Oh, nothing much."

Group glares from everyone made him sag slightly. "Oh, all right, so I dressed him up in a cute little pink tutu."

"And?" Piper grated.

"...I made him dance Swan Lake."

"And?" Growled Yuusuke.

"...As the Swan Princess."

"And?" said Kurama.

"...On national television."

"And?" Hiei hissed.

Harlequin winced. "...On Opening Night."

His voice trailed off uncertainly into a silence rife with outrage and shock. He shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot. "I'm not gonna get off easy for this one am I?"

"'Quin, that goes completely beyond the pale, even for you." Piper said at his most disapproving. "Hiei, are you still willing to maim this joker at the slightest provocation?"

Hiei's only answer was the metallic-silken sound of his katana sliding out of its sheath.

"Vegita, would you like a free shot at this creep?"

Vegita growled, small crackles of energy crawling over his skin as he powered up. Harlequin dithered nervously at the prospect of being mauled by two pissed-off firebabies. Piper grunted in satisfaction and set Vegita on the ground. "Sic 'em."

'Quin took off screaming over the horizon with both of the little monsters hot on his heels.

"Feel free to take a break, kids." Piper said, settling himself to the ground as the explosions lit up the skyline. "I have the feeling that this is going to take a while."

"Jyaoh Ensatsu Kokuryuuha!" Came faintly to their ears, followed by an impressive pyroclasm that illuminated the crystal formations for miles around.

"Ka me ha me ha!" Followed not far behind, lending a spectacular brilliance to the display.

The Spirit Detectives found nothing wrong with Piper's advice, so they arranged themselves comfortably on a nearby formation to watch the fireworks. Yuusuke was a little curious about their guide's acquaintance with Vegita, so he leaned over to Piper and asked: "So, you've fought that little guy before?"

Piper nodded, checking the tracking device for imperfections. "I visited his home dimension once. Nice place, if a bit disorganized. Vegita and his kind were a prime example of that. The Saiyins were never very numerous, but they made up for that lack in sheer destructive power. Just one of their juveniles could wipe an entire planet clean of its native civilization in under five years. That was their species' stock in trade until someone meaner than they were blew up the planet out of self-defense. There were very few survivors, of which Vegita is one of the strongest. He's even worse at controlling his temper than Hiei is, but not nearly as bright. He lets his muscles and his arrogance do most of his thinking for him, but that's normal for the last surviving member of the royal family of any species."

"Great." Kuwabara said. "Another short, evil-tempered badass to deal with. Are we going to have a lot of trouble from him?"

"I doubt it." Piper replied. "Once he realizes the fix he's in, Vegita will jut have to swallow his pride and deal with it. He's a xenocidal maniac, but he's not entirely stupid."

Kurama only listened with half an ear to the discussion going on around him; his mind was full of images from another time. So Kuronue still lived, somewhere out there. He could still remember every detail of his old partner. The narrow, sharp-featured face with those bright eyes dancing with mischief. The heavy cloud of his long, dull-black hair that hung in silky tangles after he had bathed. The soft rush of air from the black bat wings, fanning them both when the summer's heat grew too oppressive. That long, lean, lithe body that had fit so well with Kurama's own when they slept together, filling Kurama's nostrils with his warm, musky scent. Gods, how he had mourned that Chimera, had missed him down through all those weary years. Kurama felt a stab of anxiety then; he wasn't sure how Hiei was going to react to this. The little Koorime was very possessive of the people he loved, and Kurama's own love for Hiei was most intense. There was no knowing, no telling, how this problem would work out, not until they found Kuronue and saw where his affections lay. Kurama shook himself firmly to rid himself of the ghosts of the future. Speculation at this point was useless.

Not long afterwards, Hiei and Vegita returned, dragging what was left of Harlequin facedown by the ankles. "That was fun," Vegita said, dropping 'Quin's ankle and wiping his hand on his breastplate, "now send me back to my dimension. I have important things to do."

"Can they wait three months?" Kurama said, rising to his feet and stretching. "We have a problem of our own to deal with right now."

Vegita waxed wroth. "No! I demand that you send me back immediately! You will do this or-"

"Or what?" Yuusuke cut in. "Piper's the only one who knows how to get around these places You blow him up again and we'll all be stuck."

"You shut up, you pathetic weakling!" Vegita raged. "This is none of your affair!"

"On the contrary," Piper told him, bending double to look the surly Saiyin in the eye. "You, the useless prince of a dead world and its nearly extinct race, are an intruder into our affairs and have no business commanding my services as though it was your right. We have wasted enough time; within a few days, this set of dimensions will become true chaos, absolutely deadly to any outsider. Already the madness has spread from the Hub, stretching its tendrils to the outlying Lands. We will finish our errand, and then return to our homes. There will not be enough time to return you to yours before Interspace is impassable. I will not force you to join us, Vegita, but you will not survive here alone. Am I clear?"

Vegita glared at them in impotent fury. If any of these creatures were speaking the truth, he was in deeper trouble than he had ever been in before. This, he realized with an inward snarl, was definitely not his day. Though he hated to have to follow these weirdos around like a tourist, he had no choice. "All right," he grated, "but if you are lying to me..."

"Can it, Monkeyboy. 'Quin, pull yourself together and let's get out of here." Kuwabara nudged the charred heap with one foot, ignoring the Saiyin's enraged sputtering.

" _Monkeyboy?!_ "

Harlequin rose dramatically out of his own ashes, flaming phoenix-style and whistling "She'll Be Coming 'Round The Mountain When She Comes". They ignored him, too.

ooooo

The next world-fragment they arrived in was beautiful to look upon, but it made Piper and Harlequin very nervous for some reason. "This looks like one of the Seasonals." Harlequin said to Piper.

Piper nodded. "I think we may be on the verge of a Roulette in the Lands. Kids," he said to the rest of the team, "stick close. This is one of the Lands that only turn up during High Tide and is thus more dangerous than the usual bunch." With that, he pulled out his map and tried to find just where they were in the scheme of things.

Vegita and the Spirit Detectives weren't paying much attention, being far too busy trying to make sense of what they were seeing. The sky was a rushing river of azure, streaked here and there with gold and creamy white, and the atmosphere underneath was tinted faintly orange. A stream off to their right cut through soft gold-edged gray grass, bubbling and fizzing and smelling strongly of champagne. A walking forest of graceful trees formed of magenta crystal meandered over the meadows, singing softly in wind-chime voices and stopping occasionally to embrace each other. A constant sifting of sparkling ashes drifted from pure golden flowers of flame that nestled among the branches covered with amethyst leaves that tinkled when the wind caressed them. Slender, long-horned creatures with coats of greenish-white cornsilk picked their way leisurely among great low-lying patches of the most breathtakingly beautiful flowers that any of them had ever seen, grazing occasionally on the walking trees. As they watched, one beast stumbled over something in the grass and fell into the center of a flower patch and disappeared with a cry that sounded like clogged plumbing.

"What the hell?" Vegita said, and went over to the plant bed to solve the mystery; the others following closely.

Prying up a thick mat of greenery, he uncovered something extremely odd: There was no ground underneath the blooms. The root system was thick but bare of dirt, and floated on the updraft of an unbelievably deep hole in the world. Peering over his shoulder, Yuusuke made an observation.

"Those are stars down there, aren't there?" He said through a suddenly dry throat.

"A globular cluster, I think." Kurama said, very quietly. "I saw a picture of one on television once. Vegita, please put the flowers back."

Hiei, however, was fascinated. "Is that what space looks like from the outside?" He asked Vegita, who had to be nudged in the ribs before he would answer.

"Yes." The Saiyin replied, half-mesmerized by the sparkling starscape. "What kind of planet is this? This sort of thing just isn't possible!"

"Out here it is." Kuwabara told him, edging nervously away from the hole. "Put the flowers back, Vegita. I'm getting vertigo."

"We'll all get worse than that soon enough," Harlequin said, coming up behind them, "we have to get to the next jump point within the next few minutes or we're as good as mulched."

"What?" Yuusuke said, looking around for any danger.

"Over there." Harlequin pointed off to the south, where ugly rust-colored clouds were boiling over the horizon with incredible speed. Every few seconds, gleaming black lightning forked through the billows, and a scarlet fog brushed the ground beneath them. "This place is called Red Rains, and it's murderous death to anything living- acid rain at its absolute worst. Come on!"

They ran back up the hill they arrived on, where Piper was waiting for them impatiently. Thunder like a tyrannosaur's roaring shook the air as they took off across the landscape at a gallop, avoiding the flower patches as best they could. Black lightning lanced down around them as the storm gained on them, turning anything they struck into a dead-brown skeleton of what it once was. A great jangling wail rose from the walking forest as the red rain fell on it, quickly silenced by the burning onslaught of the deadly weather. A thick, copper-salt smell blew sickeningly around them, the scent of poisoned blood as the grass and flowers died practically under their feet.

"Almost there!" Piper called encouragingly to the others as hissing spatters of deadly liquid started to shower down around them.

Too late; Kurama and Kuwabara shrieked in pain as a gust of rain caught them, causing them to stagger and fall toward a denuded world-hole...

Before they could fall into the icy depths of outer space, Yuusuke, Hiei, and Harlequin managed to drag their stricken friends upright again and guide them into the cool, singing tunnels of Interspace.

ooooo

They tumbled out into a blessedly still, flat area devoid of evil weather. Piper didn't waste any time, though, and started pulling the rapidly dissolving shirts off of Kurama's and Kuwabara's backs while they howled in agony; the acid rain had eaten right through clothes and skin alike, leaving white bones exposed to the air. In a flash, he pulled out a small pot of cloudy green paste, which he spread liberally over their wounds. With vast groans of relief, they collapsed in their friend's arms.

"Red Rains," Vegita said, watching in wonder as the green healing salve closed the gaping holes in Kuwabara's and Kurama's bodies. "That's nasty stuff. Are the rest of these dimensions as bad as this?"

"Some of them are worse." Hiei said, running comforting fingers through Kurama's hair.

"And we're in one of them." Piper said, standing up and flexing his green-smeared fingers nervously. "Get Kurama and Kuwabara back on their feet; we've got to get out of here right now."

Nobody was going to argue- They realized to their shock that Piper was actually scared. His normally glossy red hide had a grey tint to it, his eyes were dulled and nervous, and there was a definite tremor in all four of his hands, which kept twitching toward the hilts of the long knives he kept in the harness straps of his lowest shoulders. His long tail whip-cracked in impatience to be gone, the sharp report making Yuusuke jump as he hauled Kuwabara upright.

"Um, Piper," 'Quin said worriedly, "just where are we?"

"Akira's Nightmare." Piper replied and moved off, forcing the others to scramble to catch up.

"Doesn't look like a nightmare." Kuwabara muttered, rubbing a still-sore shoulder.

"I wouldn't be too sure about that," Hiei said, steadying a shaky Kurama, "Take a good look around. This place feels all wrong."

Hiei spoke truth. The place _was_ wrong. They were in the heart of an incredibly huge metropolis, with buildings so massive that they were a quarter of a mile square at the base. The windows, and there were thousands, were brightly lit for the most part, but they were also as empty as the heart of a miser. Separating the towering edifices were layer upon layer of four-lane streets, spotlessly clean and devoid of any sign of life. It was late at night- at least it felt late. The street lights were shining too brightly for there to be much in the way of darkness, but it sure wasn't daytime. Yuusuke looked up, trying to see the sky past the peaks of the skyscrapers, and hauled up short with a curse. "Guys, the sky's missing!"

"There is no sky here." Piper said ominously. "Just oblivion."

Yuusuke shuddered and looked away; the bottomless void sucked at the eyeballs like a sinus headache.

The worst part of it all was the silence. Any normal city, even around four 'o' clock in the morning, always has some sound to it; the gurgle of the sewers, the ever present noise of traffic, the brainless barking of someone's watchdog. This city was totally, eerily silent. Not even a breeze was present to stir the still air. It made them all nervous, especially Vegita, who was sorely tempted to blow something up just to break the monotony.

They soon came to something both familiar and sinister in its ordinariness: a playground. Just as tidy and well-lit as the rest of the city, it seemed almost unreal. There was a slide and a swing set, of course, and a sandbox full of silver-grey sand. A few well-pruned trees stood stiffly here and there, and a basketball court lay to one side, forlornly empty.

"Damn." Piper murmured, real worry seeping into his tone. "Tatsuo's starting his rounds. This way, kids, and hurry!"

As they turned away from the park, Yuusuke decided that he'd been kept in the dark long enough. "Piper, just what is this Land all about?"

"It's Akira's Nightmare." Piper replied, unwilling to talk.

"Akira and Tatsuo" mused Kurama, "I've heard those names before. Wasn't there an animated movie called 'Akira'?"

"I saw that once." Kuwabara said. "Not a nice cartoon."

"There is, or was, a place in space-time where that movie was real life, once." Piper told them, relenting. "Some time ago it fragmented and a part of it got stuck in the Shattered Lands. This part. As you might recall, Tatsuo sold his body to an experimental laboratory for a goodly sum of money. They did some horrible things to his brain. The scientists gave him power, vast amounts of it, but he was too old for the treatments, and far too unstable already from a bad childhood and drug abuse. They could not train him to use his powers because they did not understand them, either. In the end, it drove him mad. He destroyed the city and everyone in it, and followed that up by destroying the entire world." Piper sighed deeply. "Tatsuo still haunts this place, hunting down his favorite victims and killing them in disgustingly graphic ways. When he runs out of those poor souls, he goes looking for any lost Free-Roamers that might be around."

"Like us." Harlequin put in matter-of-factly.

"Yes, like us. We call this place Akira's Nightmare not only because it is a horror to haunt dreams, but it also recurs every Spring. Every year, Tatsuo destroys it utterly, and every year at High Tide it comes back to repeat the cycle. What's more, this place follows this deranged lunatic's rules and no one elses', so don't expect to be able to make use of your own special powers."

As if to illustrate that point, a shriek of utter horror shattered the oppressive quiet, only to cut off abruptly in a terrible wet bursting noise. A soulless, malicious laugh echoed chillingly over the city, and then the silence prevailed once again.

Harlequin shuddered. "Piper, please tell me we're getting close to the Glen."

"I think so." Piper answered.

"Good! Let's go get closer."

Akira's Nightmare was a labyrinth. It had once been planned on a grid like any other city, but the deranged mind of the resident lunatic had caused serious disturbances in the way things worked. Buildings were misplaced and distorted here and there; one was upside down, and another had been turned around through the eighth dimension so that it was nearly a mile high, but only a foot or so wide. Yet another had been crushed flat, and a viscous gray fluid trickled from the windows like tears. Every so often another howl of terror would ring across the dead city, inevitably ending in a nasty gristling noise or a wet explosion. Once, they heard gunfire instead of a scream, but it ended the same way. The laughter that followed each kill was getting progressively more and more insane as the madman glutted himself on murder. It wasn't long before our heroes came across some real physical evidence of Tatsuo's haunting; the pitiful remnants of a human being, smeared thinly across the street and up the side of one skyscraper- a livid splash of bloody gore, shattered bone, and worse. Kuwabara had to stagger off to one side and throw up, and the others, even Vegita, were close to following him.

"Sweet Inari..." Kurama choked, looking away.

"Yechh." Was Hiei's contribution.

Harlequin fell over in a dead faint.

Vegita, however was distraught. He may have made his living by outright genocide, but he'd never done anything as ugly as this. "What kind of monster... I only ever blew them into another dimension. I never tried to paint the landscape..." He gulped, trying to keep his last meal where it was.

"Let's not waste any more time." Yuusuke said grimly. "I don't want to end up like this poor loser."

Nobody was going to argue with that. They stepped carefully around the mess in the road, and set off down an alley at a fast trot. They came across a lot of other victims, but weren't willing to look too closely; Tatsuo had gone easy on that first one, compared to these.

"Over there!" Kurama called suddenly, pointing to a blot of wavering air at the other end of the street. "Is that the jump point?"

"Yup!" Piper replied. "Full speed ahead!"

As one, they picked up speed, glad to be almost out of this mess. Unfortunately, just before they were within range, Tatsuo himself appeared between them and escape, forcing them to haul up short. He was young; far too young to have been driven so far around the bend. He was about Yuusuke's age and height, but his features and hair resembled Hiei's. He wore only a smudged white T-shirt and shorts, with a cape fashioned from a piece of red awning cover. His eyes were totally mad, wide and unfocused and bloodshot, and his smile was the most evil thing that our heroes had ever laid eyes on. Vegita panicked and tried to blast the boy clear over the horizon, but all that came out was a fizzle and a flash of weak light. Tatsuo giggled and raised a clenched fist, and Vegita gave a wheezing cry of alarm as an invisible force began to crush him, squeezing the air from his lungs and bending his bones to the breaking point.

It was Piper's turn to panic as the others found themselves similarly powerless. He swung himself around, jaws gaping as twin jets of fluid from his venom glands spurted out and drenched Tatsuo from head to foot. Tatsuo gave a bellow of fury and pain as the corrosive liquid dissolved his front; distracted, he lost his hold on Vegita, who sank to his knees gasping painfully.

Our heroes didn't hesitate to leave. Kuwabara scooped Vegita up under one arm and ran after the others as they stampeded down the street towards the jump point. A yowl of insane fury heralded disaster behind them as Tatsuo turned his destructive strength in a new direction. A howling whirlwind blew up around the fugitives, and the Land itself started to crumble around them. The skyscrapers came apart in chunks, dissolving before they hit the ground, and great cracks opened up in the road as Tatsuo's mad laughter roared around them on the wind. The violent air grew thick and heavy as treacle around them, sapping the strength from their limbs and forcing every movement into a slow-motion parody of itself. The dissolution of the road under their feet accelerated, however, great lumps of tarmac falling away into naked grey void. Kuwabara and Kurama weren't up to this; already weakened from the storm in Red Rains, their steps faltered badly, and the land gave way under them. They would have fallen forever into the nothingness that gaped hungrily below them if it hadn't been for Harlequin, Yuusuke, and Hiei, who caught their flailing arms and pulled them out of danger.

They were almost to the portal...

With a deadly crack, the last of the roadway disappeared, and everybody grabbed onto the Piper, whose long wings beat frantically to keep them airborne. Reaching out as far as he could, one finger brushed the ethereal membrane of the jump point-

A flash of lavender-blue light and a sensation of impossible speed later, they fell eight feet out of thin air to land with a thump in a place where the sky was green and the grass was blue. Piper struggled into a fighting crouch to see if anything was going to try to eat them, but nothing presented itself. "Take five, guys," he said breathlessly, "I think we're safe for the moment."

Everybody took the chance to pass out cold from exhaustion right then and there.

ooooo

Kurama crawled out of sleep as though it were a deep, dark pit. He lay there for a few minutes with his eyes closed, savoring the feeling of not being chased by certain death. It was almost astonishingly pleasant. The sun was warm on his body and the air was fresh, sweetened with the aroma of crushed grass. Someone was snoring loudly nearby, almost drowning out the birdsong. Something tickled Kurama's nose, and he opened his eyes to meet the cold gaze of two grotesquely bulbous gold-green insect eyes. He nearly had a heart attack before he realized that a large butterfly had perched on his nose; nothing more. Sitting up and waving the brightly-colored insect off, he took a look around him. Yuusuke was curled up on his side nearby, out cold. Kuwabara was flat on his back under a tree, vibrating the branches with his snores and occasionally scratching his crotch. Kurama shook his head with a smile. What a messy sleeper. Harlequin was hanging by his knees from a branch, smearing pistachio ice cream all over his torso in his sleep. "Weird." Kurama muttered, and looked around for the other three members of their party. He couldn't see them, but the unmistakable buzz of Hiei's happy purring was clearly audible even above Kuwabara's noise. Kurama clambered to his feet, wincing as a sore spot on his back protested; he still hadn't quite healed completely from Red Rains. He set off among the trees, following the purring, and soon came to a clear spot where he found Piper coiled loosely, giving both Hiei and Vegita a backrub. Vegita's battered armor lay discarded off to one side, pitted with acid burns and spiderwebbed with cracks from the crushing force of Tatsuo's will. Vegita himself was flat on his front, looking as though he wanted to thump Piper one for his impertinence, but maybe later. After he'd finished. Yeah. Definitely.

Hiei, however, was shamelessly enjoying himself, purring up a storm as Piper's fingers expertly smoothed knotted muscles and realigned vertebrae with small popping noises. Kurama smiled affectionately at his firebaby and knelt down to scratch Hiei behind his ears. The moment that Kurama touched him, Hiei wrapped his arms lovingly around Kurama's waist, laid his head in his lap, and buzzed louder than ever. "Good morning, Kurama. How's your back?" Piper said softly so as not to disturb the others.

"A little sore, but otherwise fine. That healing ointment's good stuff." Kurama answered, running his fingers through Hiei's hair.

Piper nodded. "I'm thinking about giving the recipe to Yukina. I've a feeling that you kids will need it more than I will."

"Hmm."

There was a _krink_ as Piper pressed down on Vegita's spine. The surly Saiyin gave a grunt and relaxed still further into the grass with a sigh of what sounded suspiciously like pleasure.

"What are you doing?" Kurama asked. "Aside from giving free backrubs."

"Noting similarities and differences." Piper replied. "I haven't seen two analogues this perfect since Cloning Constantly blew up."

"Where?"

"Another Shattered Land. The inhabitants of Cloning Constantly made their living by genetic manipulation and duplication; basically, they could clone anything and gene-tailor it to match a buyer's wishes. Their last and greatest project was a creature so powerful that it could destroy whole solar systems on a whim. Just as the clients showed up to pay for the beast, the poor stupid thing got a migraine and annihilated itself, its owners, and the entire Land."

"Ouch." Kurama said. "But why bother with comparisons? Hiei just looks a lot like Vegita, is all."

"I like to see the small details." Piper replied. "It's a bad habit that I picked up from Issola. I've found, however, that it make it easier for me to figure someone out. See this," he said, tracing the lines of Hiei's and Vegita's shoulders, "Vegita is a bit coarser and heavier around the arms and upper back; his hands are less limber. Hiei, however, is a great deal more flexible- as I'm sure you've noticed."

Kurama went bright red in the face and concentrated on getting the tangles out of Hiei's hair.

"Hiei shares his graceful physique with martial artists, acrobats, and dancers; all smooth hard muscle. Bruisers like Veege here tend to bulk up and get beefy- they tend to make up for their lack of speed or agility in strength and firepower. Swordsmen also have greater concentration and discipline; I've only ever seen a true professional lose control once, and that was because she'd just fielded seventeen thousand volts of electricity." Piper ran firm fingers up Hiei's spine, making it crackle, and waved a cautionary finger in Kurama's face. "Beware the dancing kind, Kurama. Speed, grace, and control count for a great deal in a pitched battle."

The lecture was suddenly cut off by a scream, a crash, some more screaming and a flare of energy. Then Harlequin sailed over their clearing with his pants on fire, landing in the brush with a thump some ten yards distant. "What the hell was that?" Vegita snarled, hopping up into a fighting stance.

A storm of cursing tuned the air blue over where Yuusuke and Kuwabara were. The others stood up for a look, and saw Yuusuke inventing swearwords and rubbing some new bruises; Kuwabara was slumped against a tree, looking both charred and stunned. Harlequin, his fundament still smoking slightly, came out of the bushes scowling with annoyance. "What happened over there?" Kurama asked him.

'Quin made a face. "Some of my ice cream melted, splashing Kuwabara, so the big dip got up and rattled the tree. I lost my grip on the tree, fell on Yuusuke, who took offense in the worst way. My pants are never gonna be the same again. Does he always wake up like this? If so, tell Keiko to buy some fireproof nighties!"

Vegita gave a disgusted snort and tried to stand up straight, but stopped with a pained grunt halfway there. Piper eyed him speculatively and gave him a sharp jab that sent off a chain reaction of pops and snaps all up and down his backbone. With a look of bliss on his face, Vegita toppled over into the grass.

"That should hold him for a while," Harlequin observed with a laugh. "C'mon, let's go get Yuusuke calmed down."

"And maybe throw a bucket of water on Kuwabara. He looks like he needs it." Kurama said.

"And you should go sit in one, clown." Hiei said. "Burning buttocks smell funny."

ooooo

Yuusuke was in an absolutely foul mood. Being woken up out of a sound and much-needed sleep by a falling ice-cream-smeared deity was not the way he preferred to start the day. Kuwabara was not in a good mood either; getting dripped on and then caught in the backblast of a poorly-aimed Rei Shotgun wasn't any more preferable a wakeup call. To say the least, they were both in a poopy state of mind. "Right," Yuusuke growled, flicking an inquisitive katydid off of his sleeve, "let's check the map and get out of here. No offense, Piper, but I'm getting really sick of the Shattered lands."

"Hear, hear!" The others chorused.

"All right, all right." Piper soothed, digging out his map. "Hiei, if you would go prod Vegita into motion again, I'll check our location."

Hiei ambled back into the clearing where they'd left the Saiyin, and found his analogue still flat in the grass. He nudged the recumbent doppleganger carefully with one foot. "Come on, Vegita, we're about to leave."

Vegita sat up with a frown and reached for his armor. "Will the next place be any better than the last two?"

Hiei shrugged. "I don't know. Either we'll come out in the Glen of the Damned or get chased by giant carnivorous pickles or something stupid like that."

Vegita stared at him a moment. "You're serious, aren't you? About the pickles, I mean."

"Welcome to the Shattered Lands, where things are done differently and more often. Now let's get going before they send Confetti-Breath the Wonder Goof after us."

Vegita gave a snort of laughter and eyed his battered armor sourly; scorched, cracked, and pitted with slagged pockmarks, it was nearly useless against a determined attacker. What the hell, he probably wouldn't need it anyway. He was tougher than any pickle, even giant carnivorous ones. So thinking, he followed Hiei back to where the rest of the group were, leaving it behind for the weeds to climb over.

ooooo

There was something very wrong with Interspace. It had gone all pink and smelled of peanut butter. Something about it moved Harlequin to declare in rolling tones: "The Great Truth rings to the farthest stars; Heaven is paved with granola bars."

Yuusuke was unimpressed. "Go renew your poetic licence, 'Quin. I think that one has expired."

"Eat spam and mope, Ferret." Harlequin replied cheerfully.

Yuusuke would have answered this with a real zinger if they hadn't tumbled out into a drearily familiar Land at that point. Sere, grey, and heartbreakingly gloomy, the Glen of the Damned was strangely quiet; even the wailing breeze was absent. The corpse-trees were lifeless, totally unaware of their presence.

"We made it!" Kuwabara shouted in relief. "Woo-hoo! Let's find this Chimera guy and go home."

"Never thought this dump could look so good." Kurama agreed. "Give me the tracker, Piper, so I can find Kuronue."

Vegita, however, could not understand why they were so happy to be in a place that gave him the creeps. "Where the hell are we this time?! Don't tell me you _wanted_ to come here."

"We're in the Glen of the Damned- one of the original Hells. This is what this whole misadventure has been all about, Veege." 'Quin informed him. "One of Kurama's oldest buddies got stashed here by one of their enemies a while ago. When Kurama found out that his friend was here, he bullied Piper into coming after him, despite the seasonal difficulties."

Vegita looked at him as though he had grown antlers. "That human _forced_ that monster into doing this?!"

'Quin shrugged philosophically. "Kurama's not precisely human, and Piper's more easily bullied than he looks. Hey over there! You guys found that Chimera yet?"

Kurama and Piper looked up from the tracking device. "According to this thing, we're close." Piper called back. "We think he may be in the lake."

"Let's go, then." Yuusuke said, and they all started off towards that unappetizing body of water.

On their way, Hiei noticed something strange. "Where are the zombies? They should be swarming us by now, and not one of these tree-things has given a twitch since we arrived."

"Tidal effect." Piper explained. "During High Tide, the living dead are torpid. The only thing that will wake them up right now is fresh blood being spilled somewhere close."

They paid particular attention to not scratching themselves on anything after that.

It didn't take long to reach the shores of the lake. It wasn't very large, but it didn't have to be. It stretched silently before them for about two miles, flat and smooth as a sheet of fogged glass. The water was grey, murky, and very deep, and chilly mist lurked over the surface of the water like a hangover. Under the surface, however, something just beyond perception moved sluggishly. Water plants, perhaps, or something far more unpleasant?

"Kuronue's on the bottom of that lake somewhere?" Kuwabara said.

"Yep." Piper replied, putting the tracking device away. "Fairly close to shore, fortunately."

"Well, let's get looking." Kurama said, approaching the water.

The moment he set his foot in the lake, however, the water erupted, vomiting forth something hungry and horrible. It was _enormous_ , and vaguely serpent-shaped, made up of a mishmash of what had to be dozens, if not hundreds, of long-dead demons. A thousand mouths lined with broken fangs gave vent to a wailing that pierced the eardrum, and it waved multitudes of distorted limbs uselessly as it hauled itself forward to attack. Kurama had to be hauled back away from shore bodily- the sight of the horror from his nightmares just a few days ago had paralyzed him. "Kurama!" Hiei shouted in his ear. "Snap out of it! You don't have time to be petrified!"

Kurama shuddered and shook off his fears. With a smile at his lover, he removed a rose from his hair, shook it out into a whip, and slashed at the approaching monster.

" _Shit!_ " Yuusuke shouted, dodging a flailing talon. "You said they were all asleep, Piper!"

"They usually are!" Piper replied, whipping out his swords and slicing off a tentacle. "Something's different with this one!"

"No kidding!" Kuwabara shouted over the noise.

Vegita didn't bother to comment. With a howl of his own, he let the ugly thing have it with a blast of energy that sliced it in half.

It did not bleed. Despite its long sojourn in the lake, the creature was as dry inside as any other mummy, but apparently it could still feel pain. Both halves writhed and shrieked in maniac wrath and continued to attack. It was, unfortunately, winning the battle. The beast from the lake absolutely refused to die. No matter how many chunks that Vegita and Yuusuke blasted off of its carcass, no matter how many slices the others opened up in its body, it only redoubled its efforts to kill them. It even managed to ignore Piper's venom. If that wasn't bad enough, the pieces that fell away from its flanks after each blast or slice also dragged themselves across the sand in an attempt to get a piece of our heroes.

"That does it, I have had enough of this crap!" 'Quin shouted, throwing down his sword. "No more Mister Nice God!"

With that, he pulled what appeared to be a large soda can out of his cape, gave a good shaking, and then pulled the tab. A fine, fast spray shpritzed out of the can, and whatever was in it melted the lake monster's flesh like butter. _That_ got its attention. Yowling fit to break the sound barrier, the creature hauled itself around to fend off the Laughing God. 'Quin wasn't having any of that. Humming a song under his breath, he calmly melted anything that came his way, and then chased down and dissolved whatever tried to run away.

With the monster now reduced to unidentifiable moosh, the others put their weapons away. "Potent stuff, 'Quin," Yuusuke said, "what is it?"

"Carbonated holy water." Harlequin grinned at them, took a long drink from the can and belched like a church organ. "Whoa," 'Quin giggled, "righteous."

The others looked at each other in disgust at the stupid pun, and came to an unspoken agreement. All together, they picked up the Harlequin and pitched him into the lake. "See if you can't find Kuronue while you're down there, okay?" Kurama called after the sinking god.

"Blurp!" Harlequin retorted, disappearing under the surface.

ooooo

Perhaps half an hour later, Harlequin lurched back up the beach, dragging a shapeless, man-sized chunk of something yellow behind him. "Found it," he said, laying the lump out on the sand and wringing out his cape, "there's all kinds of toothmarks on this thing."

Vegita stepped forward for a closer look. "Amber?"

"Looks like it." Piper nodded, drawing one of his swords and carefully slicing off a thin layer. "Marvellous stuff for storing things in, but it wears away easily. It looks like that creature had spent a long time chewing on this stone. The singlemindedness of the living dead is..." Piper's voice trailed off as the rough, opaque surface slid away, revealing the tattered form of the Chimera imprisoned inside it. "Oh, damn. There's still bamboo stuck in this guy."

Whoever had set the death-trap that had impaled Kuronue on a dozen bamboo spears hadn't bothered to repair the damage that those murderous shafts had caused. Once the casing of amber was dissolved, they would have to work very quickly to keep the Chimera from bleeding to death.

Piper drew in a breath with a long hiss and settled himself to the ground. "I want you all to listen very carefully to me." He told the others, pulling out the jar of healing salve and a few other items from his various pockets. "The moment I crack this shell, the entire population of this place is going to be right on top of us. I want everybody who can muster a ward or a shield to do so, and anybody else should start blasting while I get this guy pasted back together. I don't care how you do it, just keep those dusty boneracks off of me while I'm working. The moment I'm finished, we'll get gone from here. Got that?"

"Yessir!" Harlequin snapped a salute.

That was good enough for the others; as Piper prepared to dismiss the amber casing, the Reikai Tante, Vegita, and Harlequin took up positions around him, ready to face anything that came their way. A crack and a weak cry of pain behind them heralded the start of the fight as the copper-salty scent of fresh blood filled the air. Almost immediately, the sickly grey-green eyelights of the undead appeared for miles around them, and their moaning filled the air once again. The entire forest unfolded and advanced on them, hundreds more corpses hauled themselves out from beneath the sterile soil, and still more dragged themselves out of the lake. As the rotting multitudes approached, our heroes snapped up their shields, drew their weapons, and charged up for some serious blasting. Harlequin decided to shout some defiance at the enemy horde as it lurched and tumbled down to the lakeshore. "Ha! Have at you, wimpy zombies! _Grey mango fruit yuk tastes like urglefloggah!_ "

Kuwabara could not believe his ears. "What?!" He said, bracing his weight behind his shield as the walking dead slammed into it.

"'Grey mango fruit yuk tastes like urglefloggah'. It's my war cry. One of 'em, anyway." Harlequin replied, blowing a trench through the zombies with a fireball.

"I don't think I've ever heard a war cry that stupid before."

"All right, how about these? _Nanza!_ " He bellowed, shaking his fist at the enemy. " _Arauga! Rubi-cood!_ (grunt grunt)!"

"Fight your zombies."

The zombies were completely unarmed, and many were not built even for unarmed combat, so distorted and misshapen were they. Even so, their sheer numbers and desperate determination to get at someone edible threatened to overwhelm the wards. The front rows were literally being crushed to death against the shields by the press of moldering bodies. There was also no end to them. For every single individual that was mowed down by the defenders, three rose up to take its place, and they never stopped shrieking. Yuusuke was tiring fast; firing endless Rei Shotgun blasts into an uncaring army with no visible effect was very wearing, and the others weren't doing much better. Kuwabara had given up on his Rei Sword and was concentrating on not being pushed back by the sheer weight of numbers. Likewise, Kurama had stopped using his whip and was assisting Hiei with keeping the wards up. A rather wild-eyed Vegita was holding up his end of things by the simple expedient of blowing whatever got too close straight into orbit. This meant, however, that he was blasting almost continuously as the sea of zombies swarmed in to fill the holes he had cleared. This was creeping him out no end; dead guys were supposed to stay dead, not lurch up and try to take a bite out of your face. Harlequin was the only one not feeling encroaching despair. With three world's worth of power behind him, he just stood there unconcerned while everything that came within a certain distance from him turned into an astonishing variety of completely harmless things. He soon had to extend his influence as Kuwabara was knocked head over heels by what had probably been an ogre, and not long after that, Hiei, Kurama, and Yuusuke ran out of energy. Vegita was definitely getting a bit short of breath when Piper stood up with Kuronue cradled in his arms. "I'm done!" He shouted above the unholy din. "Let's roll!"

"Great!" Kurama hollered. "Where to?"

"The closest jump point is over there!" Piper pointed to an indistinct spot perhaps a hundred yards away. "Harlequin, if you would clear the way?"

"Gladly do I grant the request of the Red King!" Harlequin intoned formally and blasted a path in the appropriate direction, creating a tunnel of pure force for them.

The moment it was up, everybody dropped their wards and ran for it with the legions of this Hell snapping at their heels. Just before they reached the portal, however, one zombie managed to grab hold of 'Quin's cape, and was dragged into Interspace along with them. This was a problem. Interspace was getting progressively more unstable; it creaked and sagged under their feet like rotten ice. Completely unaware of the danger, the howling horror clawed its way up Harlequin's cape and sank its teeth into his shoulder. " _Yeeeow!_ " Harlequin yelled, tearing the creature off and hurling it away. "It bit me! The bloody thing bit me! Take that, you hopeless son of a sand flea!" Then he tossed a fireball at it.

The zombie disintegrated most satisfactorily, but the firestorm cracked the already unstable surface of the Interspace pathway. With lightning-fast speed, gleaming yellow cracks flashed through the fabric of the pathway. "Somehow, I don't think that was a good idea." Yuusuke said, and then the path came apart under them, spilling them out into the flipside realm of known space.

"And where the hell is _this?!_ " Vegita snarled, grabbing hold of Piper's forepaw.

"The Hub!" Kurama replied, catching Hiei before he drifted away. "We're in the Hub!"

" _Where?_ "

"The place where everywhere else connects to everywhere else." Yuusuke explained. "We were here once before, to keep the Artichoke of Doom from screwing things up totally."

Vegita gave him one of those "antlers" looks, and then glared suspiciously at Harlequin.

"It wasn't my fault!" 'Quin said in an injured tone. "I had my artichoke locked up back at Chaos Corner at the time. Why does no one believe that? Besides, these guys ate the one that got stuck in the Hub, anyway."

Vegita hid his face in his arms. "I wanna go home." He whimpered. "This dimension is stupid."

The Hub swirled madly about them, the music of its spheres resonating in strange crescendoes that drove the thousands of Lands into ever more violently erratic orbits around each other. It resembled a giant vortex more than anything else, the center of the web turning visibly, coruscating with every color imaginable. Swirling serenely through the chaos were the three main worlds, gleaming like polished marbles, seemingly untouched by the madness around them. As they watched, the great shimmering bulk of what had to be the Makai got steadily closer to them.

"Has it occurred to any of you that we are in fact falling toward what appears to be the Makai at a rate of speed approaching the ridiculous?" Harlequin asked them after a time.

Yuusuke thought about it for a moment. "When you put it that way... Um. Are we going to be falling out of the sky?"

"Looks like it." 'Quin said pleasantly.

"We're all gonna go splat and die!" Kuwabara panicked.

"Oh, cool it." Piper growled. "Join hands, everybody. Okay, all those of us who can fly, prepare to defy some serious gravity when we make re-entry..."

ooooo

An uncertain time later, they landed with some relief on a high rocky ridge, where Kuwabara got promptly airsick all over a small bush while the others collapsed, gasping for breath. "Air gets kinda thin way up there doesn't it?" 'Quin wheezed. "Ooooh. Remind me never to play by the laws of physics ever again."

"No." Vegita grumped.

"Is Kuronue all right?" Kurama asked, uncomfortably aware of the soft growl that came from Hiei.

"Yeah," Piper said, laying the Chimera down on a handy patch of moss. "He'll be a bit shaky from blood loss and trauma, but I think he'll be fine."

"Good." Kurama breathed a sigh of relief. "Are we safe for the moment?"

"I think so. No bad vibes are coming our way, at least. Take five, kids."

As they found seats on various rocks, Kuronue twitched and tried to sit up. "Where the hell am I?" He muttered uncertainly as Piper supported him. "We'd just got that mirror thing and were getting out of there scot free and... Oh, yeah. Bamboo trap. That was really stupid, wasn't it?"

"Mildly." Kurama said, half-teasing.

Kuronue looked up at them, managing to focus his bleary eyes after a couple of tries. Then he stared. "You," he said, pointing at Piper, "I've seen in an old book of legends. You," he pointed at Harlequin this time, "your picture was all over an antique jokebook I once stole. And there's two of Hiei. Hi, Hieis. And three ningens." He blinked at his rescuers and gave them a watery smile. "I don't feel so good." He groaned, closing his eyes again.

Vegita hissed in mild disgust. "You sure this was a good idea, Kurama?"

Kuronue sat straight up at the sound of that name. "Kurama? Where?"

"I'm right here, Kuronue." Kurama said, taking Kuronue's hand.

Kuronue gave him a puzzled look. "Um, no, I knew a Kitsune by that name. Not a human."

Kurama shrugged, and concentrated. Silver mist rose from nowhere, concealing the redhead entirely. When it blew away, an amber-eyed, white-furred fox spirit sat in his place. "Whoever said I was human?"

"Oh, great! Now we have to deal with a werewolf, too?" Vegita spat. "This sucks." He muttered, turning his back on them.

"Were-fox, actually." Yuusuke laughed. "Tell the guy what happened, Kurama, he looks ready to faint."

Kurama turned back to his bewildered Chimera and began to explain. "Something like one hundred and fifty-seven years after I lost you, someone sent a hunter after me; a professional. He managed to wound me, badly enough so that I had to take drastic measures to stay alive. I sent my spirit into the Ningenkai, where I found a human woman's womb to hide in. She raised me as her son, and I've been growing up human ever since."

"Weird." Kuronue muttered.

"You don't know the half of it." Kurama said, rolling his eyes. "I've learned a lot of things about humans this way, much of it good, and a few things that were absolutely hair-raising."

"I can believe it." Kuronue sighed, then chuckled. "You make a cute human, though. Maybe we can pick up where we left off...?"

Before Kurama could come up with a reply, Hiei dropped into Kurama's lap, wrapped his arms around the Kitsune's neck, and snarled: "MINE!"

Ever see a silver Fox-spirit blush? It's rather like watching the sun rise on a foggy morning.

"Mine. Mine mine mine mine _mine._ " Hiei reiterated.

Kuronue gave Hiei a funny look. "I take it you two got involved while I was out?" He asked weakly.

"I'm afraid so." Kurama said.

"Oh well. I don't think I could've made it with a half-ningen anyway." Kuronue seemed to remember something, and looked wistfully at Hiei. "How's the kid doing?"

"There were two of them." Hiei said flatly. "Sons. Kyoki and Kurushimi."

Kuronue looked both pleased and pole-axed by the news, a silly grin spreading over his face. "Sons? Two? Wow."

Kurama nodded happily. "Kyoki's hooked up with my cousin Koko. They own an inn in Dokoren, and Kurushimi is currently Yomi's consort."

"Wow." Kuronue purred. "I'm gonna have to go visit them some time."

"Hey guys, come have a look at this!" Harlequin's voice carried to them from on top of the ridge; bored by listening to stuff that he already knew about, he had gone exploring. "I think we hit a time warp or something, because I haven't seen the Volcano look this good for millennia!"

Curiosity piqued, the others scrambled up and over the rocky slope onto a levelled path on top of the ridge, and then were forced to sigh in wonder at the spectacle beyond. On the other side and considerably below them, protected by vast natural walls of basalt, was the heart of an empire. The basin it was built in was a stupendous volcanic crater, probably blasted out by the last major eruption of the mountain. A small lake at the center had been turned into a water garden for the pleasure of the inhabitants, and richly green and carefully tended parks surrounded it. The side of the Volcano that faced the crater had been carved with great care into an impressive entrance for a temple, a staircase of polished obsidian inlaid with red agate leading up to the doorway; dozens of gilded stone statues lining the way. The richest manors and palaces were, of course, closest to the temple. They were often six, even seven stories high, their beautifully glazed roof tiles edged with precious stones and metals to give them the appearance of dragon's scales. Surrounding this collection of edifices was a gracefully meandering wall that, like the temple staircase, was of agate-inlaid obsidian. Outside this ornamental wall, the city was laid out on a circular grid, with wide, cobbled streets and sturdy-looking buildings. The streets themselves were filled with a cheerful bustle of many peoples, mainly Oni, and a busy merchant's district on the far side contributed greatly to the noise. There were some slums, of course- jammed up against the natural walls of the city, surrounding the splendor of the richer center like an old sheet of pacific cloth cloaking a great treasure. The only way out of the city was a single, wide, and closely-guarded gate directly across from the mountain, and guard towers were spaced along the top of the walls like points on a crown. Skillfully-carved statues of flame-bright and deep-black precious and semiprecious stone dotted the city, gleaming in the sun and watching silently the lives of those around them. All the statues seemed to be of the patron deity- Salxarxis the Fire-Lord.

"I don't believe it," Piper whispered, "Do any of you realize just what this is? Just how far we have gone back?"

"I do." 'Quin said, smiling sadly. "The peak of the Empire of the Flame. About ten years before Yakumo and his Netherworld armies invaded. How far, how very far the mighty have fallen, eh?"

"Farther than you know." Piper replied, and moved to sit down by a large boulder of red jasper. The stone was exactly the same shade as he was, and thickly streaked with dark inclusions; Piper seemed to melt into the rock and disappear.

Kuronue let out his breath in a long, drawn-out whistle and turned to Kurama, who had shifted back into his human form at Hiei's insistence. "I've only ever heard about this in old legends. How 'bout you?"

"I never paid much attention to fairy stories." Kurama replied. "Still, who would have thought that a pack of Oni were capable of this?"

Hiei studied the civilization below them with a calculating expression. "Good pickings for a decent thief down there."

The speculative silence from the larcenous trio made Yuusuke rather nervous. "Not now, you guys." He told them with a warning glare. "When we get back home you can go dig around the mountain for artifacts, but not now."

"Spoilsport." Kuronue sniffed.

They sat there quietly for perhaps half an hour, watching the city chug away cheerfully below them, keeping a close watch on Hiei in case he decided to go down there for a bit of judicious pilfering. At one point, a rather younger version of the Harlequin bounded hooting and hollering over the rooftops, scattering strands of purple mylar and party favors in his wake. The sun briefly assumed the shape of a paisley-patterned hermit crab with a tasteful fringe of feathers as he passed them by, singing an obscene ballad backwards and badly off key. With a cartwheel he disappeared over a turret, and shortly afterwards, a mushroom cloud of confetti blossomed over the city. The populace may have ignored the antics of the King of Jesters, but the Reikai Tante did not.

Wilting under their stares, Harlequin buried his head in his hands and groaned. "Before you ask, guys, that was the first and last time I went on a three-day lemonade bender, and no, I won't tell you about it. My girlfriend was furious."

"Girlfriend?" Yuusuke said with great interest.

Before 'Quin could tell Yuusuke to go stick his inquisitive nature in his ear, a new voice from behind startled them. "Aha!" It shouted. "Interlopers! Trespassers! Invaders, even!"

They whirled round to see who was yelling at them. It turned out to be a large, armored Oni guardsman who carried a spear with a blade of flame at least two or three feet long; what's more, he carried it like he knew exactly how to use it. Strangely enough, he strongly resembled George. "Don't move, or I'll fry you where you sit!" The guard declared. "I claim Conqueror's Right, and all of you are therefore my property."

Vegita was too stunned by the sheer effrontery of this guy to blow him away. "Is he serious?" He asked Harlequin, who was trying not to giggle.

"You betcha," 'Quin whispered back, "That spear of his is a pretty potent weapon, and the people around here were pretty decadent at this point in time. A foreigner had to be real careful about slavers lurking around every corner."

"You're a good-looking lot, anyway," the guard went on, oblivious to their discussion, "let's see. A fire demon, three ningens -cute ones, too, and, uh, three Chimerae. A good haul."

"Three Chimerae?" Kuronue asked, puzzled.

"He means you, me, and Vegita." Harlequin explained. "No offense, Veege, but that tail of yours suggests an ape-human mix, and there were a few mock-ups of me wandering around, too."

Vegita growled angrily, electricity flickering over his hands as he powered up. "I am nobody's property."

"Ooh!" The guard said happily. "I should be able to get three hundred in gold for the flame-hair, and just as much for the fire-demon, too. Dunno about the rest, though; that bat-Chimera looks a bit weedy."

Our heroes shared a rather fed-up look and readied their weapons. They had gotten quite tired of this guy, and were determined to give him a lesson in forcible emancipation.

"Oh, stop that." Piper said, rising up out of concealment. "If you thump that one, you have the whole pack of them all over you like a landlubber's lunch."

That got the guard's attention. "L-lord Teomenava!" He yelped, nearly dropping his spear on his foot. "W-what are you doing here?"

"That is none of your affair." Piper said coldly, narrowing his eyes at the nervous Oni. "These people are with me; Conqueror's Right does not apply- not even to the Chimerae."

"Can't I keep the flame-hair?" The guard pleaded. "I'll split the price with you."

Piper looked at Kurama and pretended to consider the offer- at least Kurama hoped that Piper was pretending. "Sorry, no. That one is needed elsewhere," He said, "more's the pity. We must leave now. By the way, sentinel, be very, very vigilant for the next ten years. I foresee enough fighting to cure you of boredom forever."

With that, he led the others down the ridge, leaving the confused guard to puzzle over the cryptic warning.

"You weren't really considering selling me into slavery, were you?" Kurama asked as they picked their way down the slope.

"Not too seriously, though it would teach you not to run off on wild goose chases." Piper said. "I would, of course, have bought you back before the invasion."

Hiei growled warningly and clutched his sword hilt. "You sell Kurama over my dead body."

"You're quite right," Harlequin laughed, "you two should definitely come as a set."

There was a brief fracas as Hiei attempted to cut Harlequin to ribbons. He didn't quite succeed in that, but he did manage to chase 'Quin up a tree, eventually forcing the others to step in and calm the enraged firebaby down. This wasn't too hard; Kuronue hauled Hiei off the trunk of the tree and Kurama scratched him behind the ears until he was too busy purring to worry about annoying clowns.

"I still think you should've let that Oni have 'em." 'Quin grumped, climbing down and pulling crab apples out of his cape. "It wouldn't have inconvenienced them all that much. They might even have gotten to like it."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Hiei asked angrily as they started walking again.

"It's a Golden Age right now, remember?" Piper said with some amusement, "At this point in time, slaves were extremely valuable property, even more so than livestock."

"That's supposed to impress us?" Kuwabara said.

Piper shrugged. "Farm animals may put food on the table, but they're absolutely useless when the roof needs re-shingling. There is a long list of laws protecting slaves, especially skilled ones. For example: They are registered by name, date of capture, and ki signature to prevent mix-ups, they are legally free after ten years of service, a special permit is needed for brothel slaves, and they must be well-fed and taken care of. Nasty things like flogging, mutilation, tattooing, rape, and murder are reserved for condemned criminals. These laws are strictly enforced, and violators are harshly punished. The poor people of this city quite often sold their children in order to make sure they would live to adulthood instead of starving to death in some alley. It's not a very democratic situation, but it works quite well."

"You sound like you experienced it firsthand." Yuusuke said.

"I did. When I first came to this set of worlds, I was rather badly lost. Salxarxis offered me a job as his Emissary, and I spent some five hundred years learning my way around. I actually owned a few slaves myself; I was generally too busy keeping the outlying provinces peaceful to worry about the state of the house at the time. They never complained about my habits, and I never griped about theirs."

"If you say so," Hiei muttered, "just one thing, Piper."

"Yes?"

"'Teomenava'?"

Piper sighed wearily. "I hoped you might have forgotten about that. Oh, well. My full formal name is 'The Piper Teomenava Four-Hands-Flaming'."

Hiei and several others broke down in a fit of snickers.

Piper glared at them. "Hey, you think that's bad? My sister is The Piper Im'nekochiv One-Song-Shatters."

"She's got a bad voice?" Kuronue asked.

"No, a very good one. She's of the Singer's Creed, and her voice control is something else- she knows just the right frequencies to take just about anything down to pieces."

"'Teomenava'. Hee hee hee!" Hiei giggled, unable to drop the subject.

"Oh, shut up, Bully." Piper growled.

"Weenie." Hiei replied, eyes brightening.

"Bully!"

"Weenie!"

"Bully!"

"Weenie!"

Harlequin, Kuwabara, Kurama, and Kuronue prudently stepped out of Yuusuke's way- he was starting to look ready to rip somebody's throat out with his teeth. Vegita was stunned once again, this time by the silliness of this little argument. It was just too much. He'd had an absolutely lousy couple of days and was not about to put up with petty name calling. When Yuusuke screamed like a disenfranchised banshee and opened up with a Rei Gun blast that lit up the sky, Vegita joined in with gusto. Hiei and Piper bolted for the trees without delay with their attackers running after them and screaming all manner of grisly threats.

"Do they do that often?" Kuronue asked, slightly bewildered by the display.

"As often as possible, and usually right in front of Yuusuke." Kuwabara said. "I think they do it to annoy him."

"It's working." Kuronue said.

"C'mon, let's try to catch up." Harlequin sighed. "If those two loons kill Piper, you're gonna wind up facing Yakumo again, and this time he'll have _lots_ of friends with him."

ooooo

It was rather fortunate that the jump point was placed in the middle of a rushing mountain river; not only did splashing through it cool Yuusuke and Vegita off, it slowed both them and Piper and Hiei down enough for the others to catch up. Kuronue, by no means totally recovered from his ordeal, was starting to wear out.

The next world they entered was strangely, almost hauntingly familiar, though none of them could say exactly why for quite some time. It didn't look like anything they'd seen before, anyway. The gritty soil had given rise to a forest of very peculiar trees; The trunks were square, dull green, and clothed with a strange, seamless coat of velvety bark, and the trunks were unusually slender and flexible for a tree that grew so very tall. And tall they did grow! Each slender-boled tree rose to heights that would have embarrassed a redwood. They also seemed to have given branches a miss for the most part, growing long, serrated leaves a big as a king-sized bedsheet straight out from the trunk, or growing a few slightly smaller leaves out on the end of a short branch or two. When our heroes looked up into the deep green gloom, for the forest grew in a tangled mass, the wind would sometimes blow an opening in the canopy, and rings of enormous lavender flowers would become visible, crowning the very tops of the tallest trees. What's more, the trees were fragrant, giving off an odor that was fresh, sharp, and sweet, and very, very well known to the Reikai Tante. It was Kurama, of course, who put a name to it. "Spearmint?"

Everything fell into place. They knew exactly where they were now. "Yeah!" Kuwabara said with a laugh, "Spearmint!"

"We're still on the mountain, then." Yuusuke said, fingering the bark on one of the mint-trees. "Stuff grows fast, doesn't it?"

"Not this fast." Harlequin squinted up at the skies speculatively. "From the feel of things, we've hit another time warp. We're about a hundred years ahead of where we live, Makai time. Things have changed somewhat."

"What's all this about?" Kuronue asked, looking around at the forest with deep suspicion. "Kurama, don't tell me that you had something to do with this."

Kurama chuckled at his tone. "It's a long story. You see, about a year or two ago, Harlequin got his voice stolen by the Demon-Lord Yashi..."

And so on they went, carefully wending their way through the forest while telling a tale rich with light, caffeine, bizarre magic, pies, Pythons, pathos, and explosive battles. They'd just gotten into describing just what happened to the Koorime's floating glacier when they found that they were not alone.

"Hey, Weenie, you've got little green things crawling up your back." Hiei said.

"What?" Piper yelped, jerking his head around.

As he did, his eyes met with a pair of soft lavender ones, peering out of a mint-green, elfin face. With some care, he coaxed the tiny creature into his upper hands for a better look. It was about the size and shape of a human five-year-old, but slender and lightly built, with long, delicate fingers and toes. Its skin was the same dull green of the trees in which they lived, and lines of darker green like the veins of a leaf patterned it from head to foot. Instead of hair, a mane of small, leafy growths crowned its head, mantling its thin shoulders. It exuded the spearmint fragrance pleasantly as well; in short, quite an engaging little critter.

"Ah, a Mintdevil, I believe," Piper said softly, stroking the leafy mane and causing the creature to twitter with pleasure, "I don't think I've ever seen a creature so strongly dryadic."

And there were lots of them. The Mintdevils seemed to find the travellers absolutely fascinating, climbing all over them like monkeys on a jungle gym- and they didn't come alone. A swarm of tiny fairylike creatures with dragonfly wings and bodies that glowed like candle flames hovered and flitted through the murky air around them. Kuwabara snatched a couple out of the air and took a closer look. "Hey, guys? These little fairy things look just like Kurama and Hiei."

One of the two he'd caught, the one that bore a strong resemblance to their resident firebaby, proved that the relationship went farther than mere appearances by setting fire to Kuwabara's nose.

"Just what were you two doing in that puddle, Kurama?" Yuusuke asked as Kuwabara screeched and clutched at his injured honker.

"None of your goddamned business." Snarled Hiei while Kurama blushed.

"Whatever it was, it was potent!" Harlequin chuckled. "It would have had to have been, to spawn a race of Firesprites like this."

Kurama, still slightly red in the face told Harlequin that his great-uncle Salxarxis had a weird sense of humor.

'Quin shrugged. "Nothing ever goes to waste around Sal. He can find a use for anything. By the way, fox, your scalp is glowing."

"I know." Kurama replied with some disgust as his teammates snickered.

The Firesprites had apparently fallen in love with Kurama's scarlet locks; there were dozens of the little critters hanging off his hair and crooning gently into his ears. Kurama was completely unable to dislodge them- whenever he ran his fingers through his hair, they would lift off, but the moment he took his hands away, they came right back.

Enough was enough. "'Quin, you got a bucket of water on you? These sprites are cute, but they're getting on my nerves."

"But they _love_ you!" 'Quin pleaded, grinning widely. "Besides, you're probably their daddy."

"'Quin, the bucket. Now." Kurama growled.

With a long-suffering sigh, Harlequin pulled a sloshing bucket out of a pocket and offered it to the offended redhead.

As one, every Firesprite on Kurama's head yelped and headed for the mint. 'Quin shrugged, grinned, and upturned the bucket over his own head and left it there, collecting some funny looks from Vegita and Kuronue. The others ignored him, being well used to his antics.

Vegita scowled to himself and chased yet another Mintdevil off of his shoulders. This was stupid. He was following a bunch of first-class frothing-at-the-brain weirdos around a set of split infinities that could make a saint hand in his halo, and he couldn't just blow them up because then he'd probably get eaten by a giant carnivorous pickle. Hells, even if he did blow them up, they'd just find a way back. He couldn't even lay waste to any of these places without breaking them. He wanted to go home. He wanted very badly to go ape and beat up Goku and Piccolo and the rest of the Special Forces and maybe even go to Bulma's place for some lemonade, and after the lemonade, something a little more enjoyable-

"Chuck! Chuck chip chitter _skraww!_ " _Clonk!_

Vegita was momentarily staggered when a Mintdevil collided with his skull, and then it hung onto his hair, screeching in terror.

"What the hell's going on now?" Kuronue snapped.

The slavering beasts that burst out of the foliage at that point caused every Mintdevil and Firesprite to run keening for cover. They were big. They were green. Long fuzzy tails flipped in an elaborate sign language. Mad red eyes peered out of distorted rodent faces, saliva dribbling from long, sharp incisors as they leaped expertly from leaf to leaf. They were quite obviously some of the most competent predators in the mint forest.

"Squirrels?" Kuronue said, genuinely boggled.

"Oh, please, no." Yuusuke groaned. He remembered the last time he'd run into a squirrel.

Vegita's temper, never very stable under any circumstances and especially not these, snapped. "Oh, no." He grated, sending off tendrils of lightning as he powered up. "First it was that damned clown. Then Red Rains. Then that crazy in the city. Then a pack of zombies, then falling clean out of everywhere, then some idiot with a spear! Now it's evil squirrels! I've had enough!"

The others hit the dirt as Vegita took out his frustrations on the squirrels, blowing them skyward in a fantastic explosion. As he stood there gasping for breath from the force of the blast, the rodents dropped flaming out of the stratosphere, making little "eeee!" noises as they fell.

"You finished yet?" Piper asked acidly.

"Real good, junior," Harlequin growled, hopping back upright, "now you've really done it. C'mon, guys, we have to leave _now._ "

"Why?" Hiei asked, trotting to keep up with the increased pace that 'Quin set.

"It's spring, remember?" Harlequin answered. "There's a variety of smallish, ground-roaming dragon that lives around here. Their courting rituals include large explosions and raining fuzzy comets. Veege has just presented us with a truly virtuoso performance, and the female dragons get extremely disappointed if the one who made it isn't a male dragon."

A large, hoarse voice nearby crooned, "Yoo hoo..."

"Shit! Run for it!"

They made it to the jump point just in time.

ooooo

Once again, they emerged into a nightscape, but one subtly different from the previous ones. All right, maybe not so subtle. The atmosphere was rich with activity, light and sound, with the kind of music that went straight to the bone and the blood and made one's feet itch to dance. A few deep breaths of the air, perfumed with smells of alcohol, ozone, and excitement, served to revive our weary adventurers considerably. "Where are we?" Yuusuke asked, eyes sparkling oddly.

"Lucid Night." Piper replied happily. "We're very close to home now, kids. This Land is never out of reach of the Reikai."

"It doesn't look finished." Kuronue said, trying to get a better look at the busy populace and failing.

"It isn't." Piper told him. "It never needed to be."

Kuronue's comment was very appropriate; whoever had built this place had quit almost before it had started- it was nothing but shadows and highlights. The buildings were large blocky shapes with regularly-spaced gleams for windows, except where a disco or a party had been established; those were a riot of color and reflections, music thumping through the air like a heartbeat. The stars shone down from the vault of the heavens like neon and acetylene, and beneath them the impossible flew. High-flying airplanes disgorged flocks of brightly-colored skydivers and airsurfers into the firmament, while surfers of a different type skimmed over the surface of a towering tidal wave below. When the wave passed, it left a snowy mountain where none had been before, with skiers and snowboarders racing down its moonlit flanks. Yuusuke and Kuwabara had to hop to one side to keep from being mowed down by a pack of motorcycles that were nothing more than chrome gleams ornamenting shadows made substance, streaking off into the endless, singing night with echoing roars. The people of this land were much like these motorcyclists; energetic shadow figures detailed with the gleams of light: The flash of eyes and smiling teeth, the soft, silky gleams of hair and sleek leather, bright metallic shine of metal shaping studs, spikes, chains, and jewelry. Their voices were mere echoes of the real thing, and they paid little attention to the Reikai Tante as our heroes passed through them. Far and away on a high promontory, a single figure danced while tirelessly pounding a drum that set the heartbeat for the entire Land.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Kuronue asked, a bit surly. "Everything needs to be finished."

"Not Lucid Night," Harlequin said happily, and spun around in a circle to take it all in, grinning up at the cloudless sky. "What a place! In its very incompleteness, it offers completeness- the folks here enjoy it, and what they say, goes!"

"Huh?" was Kuronue's brilliant answer.

"Believe it or not, this place counts as a heaven." Piper told them, dancing to one side to avoid colliding with a phantom skateboarder.

"Really," Yuusuke said with an odd note of yearning in his voice. One of the shadow-girls had blown him a kiss.

"Oh, yes." Piper went on, oblivious to the change coming over both Yuusuke and Kuwabara. "Lucid Night never really was a part of the Reikai, though. It was a sort of bridging-point between all four worlds; the destruction of the Meikai shook it loose. It still functions as it always has, and it probably always will. What Lucid Night is is a haven for all those people who have spent their lives in the pursuit of fun- very often they die young in the process. I don't think I'll ever understand them. Cheerfully they hurl themselves into the jaws of death, and consider it well worth it even if they lose an arm or a leg. Fast sports, hard sports, the more dangerous it is, the more they love it.

"This Land is the paradise set aside for the eternal teenager. The inhabitants don't need to eat, drink, or sleep, but they can if they like. The beer is always excellent, the guys are handsome, the girls are gorgeous, and all are forever young. They can't die: No drug addicts, no diseases transmit, no pregnancies occur, no hangovers ruin the morning because it's always Saturday night. The parties never fall flat. No injury is fatal, because injuries never occur. Here is where the young are truly godlike- untouchable, immortal, incorruptible, perfect. And all march to the beat of the Different Drummer-that's him, right up there on the hill- but only if it looks like fun."

"Sounds great." Kuwabara said, looking with some envy at a couple of impossibly stripped-down motorcycles.

"Sounds dangerous." Hiei murmured, eyeing his two teammates suspiciously.

"Oh, it is," Harlequin cut in. "Not only is it busily seducing Yuusuke and Kuwabara, but this marvellous pack of phantoms are capable of some unbelievable levels of mayhem."

"I find that hard to believe." Vegita snorted derisively. "These things are only interested in a good time."

Harlequin shook his head with amused tolerance. "Oh, I dunno. Remember what you considered a good time when you were eighteen or so?"

"Never you mind that!" Vegita retorted.

"Oddly enough, Yakumo recognized their destructive potential, and believe you me, it is significant!" Piper cut in, defusing the Saiyin. "The way the Lucid Ones work is unique They do everything all together, but only if it suits all of them. Try to imagine a group mind made up of bloody-minded individuals. Some time before the destruction of the Empire of the Flame, he managed to convince the Lucids to invade the Ningenkai so he could take it over. Just one problem. They came out into that world completely wrong- instead of coming out over Japan like they were supposed to, they appeared in North America. Several centuries ahead of when they were supposed to arrive, too."

"When did they come?" Kurama asked, puzzled. "I've never heard anything about this event."

"They arrived in the early 1960's and fell in love with an entire generation."

" _Hippies?!_ " Kurama gasped, the realization sinking in.

"Yup. The Americans are still feeling the repercussions of that decade. It took Enma ten years to persuade them to go home, and even so, some stayed behind. Every so often you'll find a haunted guitar or something lying around."

"Triply weird." Kuronue muttered, rubbing his head wearily and turning to Kurama and the small, dark-haired individual that followed him closely. "Hey, Kurama, Hiei, how 'bout we ditch these guys and go get drunk once we get back to the Reikai?"

"I'm not Hiei." Vegita growled.

Kuronue blinked. "Will you two stop being so identical? I can't tell you apart."

Yuusuke grinned. "Hiei's the one who wears black all the time and hangs out near Kurama."

"That describes both of them." Kuronue said.

"It's navy blue, not black, you colorblind moron." Vegita scowled at the Chimera.

"How can you tell in this light?" Kuronue shot back.

"Try this, Kuronue," Harlequin said, stepping behind Vegita and making a grab for something. "Hiei's the quiet one with the white markings in his hair. Vegita's the rude one with the fuzzy monkey tail- see?"

"Hey!" Vegita cried as 'Quin pulled his tail out to its full length. He quickly twisted loose of the Laughing God's grip, yanked 'Quin down to his level by the shirt, and bashed him one in the face. It made him feel much better. "Right," he hissed, dusting off his hands. "This jump point of yours had better be close, Piper. I feel like doing something permanent to someone."

As Piper reassured Vegita, Hiei and Kurama sidled close to Kuronue. "You're on." Kurama whispered, and Hiei nodded his agreement. "I admit it- we could use a drink."

"We could go to your cousin's inn." Hiei suggested.

"Perfect." Kurama and Kuronue said in pleased unison.

ooooo

Aside from having to pull Yuusuke and Kuwabara away from a tempting display of shadowcycles, they reached the jump point without incident. "This is it, fellas," Piper told them with much relief, "one last jump and we're home free. Coming?"

"Can't we stay here for just a little while?" Kuwabara asked rather plaintively.

"Just long enough for me to try out those motorcycles..." Yuusuke agreed.

Piper shook his head. "We're out of time, kids. It's now or never. If you get stuck here for three months, you'll join the group mind and become another pair of phantoms. You'll never leave again if that comes to pass. Let's go."

"Spending all of eternity partying doesn't sound so bad to me." Yuusuke said. "I'm entitled to some fun, aren't I?"

"What's wrong with them?" Kuronue asked Harlequin, "and what's up with you, Kurama?"

Kurama was also feeling the pull of this strange heaven. As a Kitsune, he yearned toward any world where he could do as he damned well pleased and get away with it, but his unusually mature ningen half overrode the fox half. "We don't have time for this." He gasped.

"The problem, sir, is that Kurama, Yuusuke, and Kuwabara are, for the most part, highly adventurous human teenagers. As such, they stand a good chance of winding up here pretty soon; they can feel the attraction very strongly." Harlequin informed Kuronue.

Almost desperately, Kurama called to his teammates: "What would Keiko and Yukina think if you stayed?"

"YUKINA-SAN!" Kuwabara hollered. "Heck with this place, let's get moving!"

"And Keiko would probably just stomp in here, give me a smack with that mallet of hers and drag me out of here by the ear." Yuusuke sighed ruefully. "I don't think I could take the embarrassment. Let's go."

And so they left the Shattered Lands behind, and good riddance.

ooooo

"Whoooaaahh!"

"Yike!"

"Aaargh!"

" _(Hooon!)_ "

"Yaaaah!"

"Wha-!"

"Whoops!"

"(Fweeee!)"

 **THUMP!**

"We made it!" Someone in the heap of bodies on the floor exulted.

"Yeah, through the ceiling!" Yuusuke snarled. "This is stupid! When I find out who's responsible for this-!"

Everybody glared at Harlequin, who was trying to get his kazoo out of his ear. "Not me!" He yelped. "Not me! I can't work on that scale! Well, only when it's funny. But it's not funny! Especially since whoever's on top of me weighs a ton!"

"That would be Kuwabara, then." Hiei said.

"You shut up, you sawed-off freak tent reject!" Kuwabara shouted. "Just because you're on top of the pile-"

"Then who's on the bottom?" Kurama asked. "I can see all of you guys, but carpets aren't usually this lumpy."

"Dunno." Piper grunted, then pushed himself and everybody else up just enough to take a look. "Oh. Sorry about that, George. By the way, your many-times-great-grandfather would have said 'hi' if he hadn't been so busy thinking about how much cash he would get for selling Kurama."

"Ooof." Replied the flattened Oni.

After a few minutes of busy disentanglement, including an argument about just which legs belonged to who, they managed to get a look at their surroundings. Koenma was sitting at his desk, where he had watched the whole thing with very wide eyes. "Hi there, Koenma!" Kuwabara waved cheerfully at the startled godling and pulling Kuronue into view. "Lookit what we found!"

"So," Yuusuke said, pulling himself to his feet, "did we get back in time to save you from a serious fannywhacking or- Um. Hello, Lord Enma."

Sure enough, they were a few minutes too late. Huge, bearded, and glowering, the Emperor of the Reikai stood near Koenma's desk. He looked a little startled by their sudden arrival, but he was also unimpressed with it. "What is this all about?" he rumbled suspiciously.

With a low growl, Piper shook Vegita and Kurama off of his back and stood up. "Enma, Koenma, you and I need to talk. Now. The rest of you-" he flicked a hand at the others, "go home."

"How?" Vegita grumped right back.

Piper paused for a moment, and then sighed. "You're quite right. Wait here; this shouldn't take too long." With that, he herded Enma and his son into another room and shut the door firmly.

Kurama chuckled wearily. "Boy, are they gonna get it. Yuusuke, Hiei and I are taking Kuronue to the Nine Tail Inn so he can meet his son."

Yuusuke nodded. "See you around, Kurama. Hey, 'Quin, give us a ride home?"

"Why not?" Harlequin said. "Don't get too mellow tonight, guys. After this little misadventure, you might not survive the hangover."

The two groups shimmered and disappeared, leaving the Saiyin alone in the room with George, who was still recovering from having been landed on. Vegita was not a happy camper. He hated to be kept waiting by anyone. It was a boring room, too, and that grey guy looked a lot like a certain annoying twerp with a flaming spear.

George was becoming increasingly nervous with the way that the short Hiei-looking guy was glaring at him. Being exceedingly careful not to turn his back on him, he sidled over to the door. "Hey, Botan?" he called down the hall to where the fairy girl was reading the paper. "Could you bring some tea in here?"

ooooo

Epilogue

The Reikai Tante strolled sedately through the marketplace, enjoying the late May sunshine. The birds were singing as they built their nests in every conceivable crevice, flowers were blooming absolutely everywhere, and children ran laughing down the sidewalks to the parks and playgrounds where fresh green grass softened the earth. As they approached a cafe, they passed a policeman, who was muttering nervously into his walkie-talkie, eyes fixed on something a short distance away. "What's up with him?" Kuwabara asked Yuusuke, who shrugged.

"Let's find out." Kurama said. "It just might be our business."

Oddly enough, it was. Three extremely unusual characters were sitting at a table outside the cafe, drawing funny looks from the passers-by. One was a man of indeterminate age, average height, and unbelievably bad fashion sense, who was busily working his way through what appeared to be a peanut butter-and-jelly pizza. The second was a very tall man with reddish skin, silver hair in cornrow braids, and black clothes and sunglasses; he was trying to figure out how to eat an ice-cream cone and not having much luck. The third was as short as the second was tall, with bristly black hair, a grouchy expression, and a milkshake.

"Piper? Harlequin? Vegita?" Yuusuke said, walking up to them. "What are you guys doing here?"

"It's a long story." Vegita sighed, wiping one hand on his jeans; his milkshake was leaking.

Harlequin chortled around a mouthful of pizza. "Veege's too cute for his own good."

Vegita blew him a raspberry.

"We went to the Makai after I talked with Enma," Piper began, answering the Reikai Tante's questioning looks, "I thought we might fit in the best over there. What a mistake! Mukuro mistook him for Hiei and tried seducing him. She almost got as far as the bedroom when she discovered her mistake and Vegita discovered her intentions. Just how much of her palace did you two knock over

during that argument, anyway?"

"'Bout a third. Ugly place anyway." Vegita said, trying to find the leak in his cup.

"To say the least, we had to leave." Piper continued. "We skipped over to the Reikai and ran into even more problems. The current preference among the lady angels at the moment is for short, well-built, and aggressive men."

"Veege had to beat them off with a stick." Harlequin commented, ignoring Vegita's sour glare.

"That wasn't what he beat them off with, 'Quin. The fireworks he made attracted Enma's attention, and Vegita wasn't in any mood to let big hairy guys tell him what not to do."

"You tried to blow up Enma, didn't you?" Hiei asked his analogue.

Vegita shrugged. "It's not my fault that he's fireproof."

"We had to leave again, as you may have guessed." Piper said as the others groaned. "It's working out fairly well here, except for the nervous policeman over there, but the girls here think he's cute, too."

"Better tone down on the old pheromones, Veege," Harlequin said, finishing off his pizza. "Bulma would have your hide if you got into any entanglements, what with her being pregnant and all."

Vegita dropped his milkshake. "Pregnant?" He asked in a very quiet voice.

"Oh, yes!" Harlequin patted the stunned Saiyin on the shoulder. "She's about eight months along with a strong, healthy, and very, very, active child."

"Child?" Vegita's hands were starting to shake.

"It's a son, by the way." 'Quin added. "Congratulations."

"Son?" Vegita looked at Piper, who was heroically refraining from laughing at Vegita's expression. "Piper, I wanna go home _now!_ "

"We can't." Piper carefully fended off Vegita as he tried to grab his shirt. "If we tried to get through the Lands now, we wouldn't make it past the first jump point. Vegita, stop that! If I drop this cone, you're going to be wearing it!"

Piper lost his grip on his ice-cream anyway, but the chilly stuff helped to cool Vegita down. "Bulma's gonna kill me for being gone so long." He moaned, wiping fudge ripple off of his forehead.

"It's all right." Harlequin consoled him. "I got the entire journey on video, so you'll be able to prove that you had a good reason for being gone. You'll be home in time for the birth, never fear!"

"Birth?" Vegita dropped his napkin.

"Anyway," Piper said as 'Quin tried to snap Vegita out of his trance, "how have you kids been, and where is Kuronue?"

"Kuronue's fine." Kurama said with a smile. "He and Kyoki got along like a house on fire. He's taken up thieving again, but he promised me that he'd be much more careful in the future. And that he's never going near a bamboo grove ever again."

"Wise Chimera." Piper laughed. "And you two?" He asked Yuusuke and Kuwabara.

Kuwabara shrugged. "We came home, ate dinner, and got drunk off our asses. Then we got hung over and skipped school. Y'know, the usual."

Piper nodded. "I can understand that, after what we went through. By the way, I gave Yukina the recipe for that green healing salve that worked so well. I advise you to get some from her when you have the chance."

There was a brief interruption just then as 'Quin upended a bucket of water over Vegita's head. It snapped him out of his trance, but the Saiyin grabbed the bucket, crumpled it up, and stuffed it down 'Quin's throat. "Yummy! Lotsa iron!" Harlequin declared.

"I hate him." Vegita muttered, resting his chin on his hands and sulking.

"So, will you guys be here for long?" Yuusuke asked.

"Only for another three weeks; the moment that's over, the Lands will probably be safe enough to travel through again." Piper informed them. "Whether it's safe or not won't matter much anyway."

"Yeah," Harlequin cut in, "Veege here will be homesick enough to kick over Mount Fuji by the time those three weeks are up. We won't have any choice but to chance it."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that." Kurama said.

"Yeah." Kuwabara agreed. "Hey, do you think we could stop at Genkai's place and see if that salve is ready yet?"

Hiei growled and reached for a dagger, but Kurama stopped him. "Don't worry, Hiei," the redhead reassured him, "if he gets too pushy, Genkai will blow his head off."

Hiei glowered at Kurama as Kuwabara set off down the road with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. "Spoilsport." He grumped.

"Messily disemboweling your fellow Spirit Detectives is not something you do in public, Hiei. Now let's catch up with the others, if only so that you can referee."

"Hmph. Stupid fox."

end

 **(Extra kudos to those that can name all the characters from Analogue Mirrors!)**


End file.
